Shadow Lover
by Jendra
Summary: Duo called himself Shinigami.  Shinigami called Duo, his. And it was almost time for Duo to know that too. 5x2
1. Chapter 1

This story was written... back around the time Gundam Wing first went to Cartoon Network. It's fifteen parts plus an epilogue, and will be posted every Monday and Thursday until it's complete. It is Duo/Wufei, non-graphic yaoi. This is the only story I've written in this fandom, but it's one of my favorites. I hope you like it as well. I love getting reviews, so don't hesitate to tell me what you think!

This is the disclaimer... read well, it's the only time I'm really going to put one up here... and it's going to be bad. I do not own the characters or setting of Gundam Wing and am using them without the permission of the owners... whoever they might be. I don't even really own the title, since it's the title of a poem/song by Mercedes Lackey. I do however, own the plot. Personally, I've never seen anything like it, but I stopped reading in this fandom soon after I finished writing this ^_^.

Enjoy!

The Shadow Lover

by Jendra

An invisible presence watched avidly as the Gundam in front of him danced through the opposing mobile suits, leaving behind a swath of destruction. Hidden dark eyes gleamed as they observed the number of dead rise. Deep in the shadows, Shinigami watched.

It had been many years, centuries, millennia even, since the God of Death had last felt an interest in the living. So many years that he had lately been trying to convince his cousin that a total global nuclear war would be a good thing. At least then, after a last flurry of work, his job would finally be done. Now however, he was glad that he had failed. The Gundam pilots had renewed his interest in fleeting mortal life and his own duty.

All of the pilots were worshipers of his, whether they knew it or not. It was a good thing too. If Heero hadn't had Shinigami on his side, one of those self-destructs might actually have worked. The God of Death snorted quietly at the thought. Sometimes he thought the Perfect Soldier would be better off with his death wish answered, but his death would have devastated the others. Especially the one he was watching now.

This one... This one was his favorite. Not only out of all the pilots, but of all mortals, everywhere. This one was not just a worshiper, this was his high priest. This mortal child who not only dealt death, but loved it. Loved *him*.

Duo Maxwell.

The beautiful, violet eyed, braided boy who had raised his worship out of the darkness. The youth who made every death a sacrifice to him, every battle a paean of praise sung to him. The teen whose Gundam was patterned after old tales of himself, scythe and all. The man who proclaimed himself Shinigami. Or, as the true God of Death preferred to think of it...

Shinigami's.

His.

Duo Maxwell had already given his heart and soul to his God. All that was left was his body.

And he would have that too.

Soon.

Duo returned to the safe house in a somber mood. He had felt it again. He knew he had been watched during the battle, but he couldn't find anyone or anything that was doing it. It was driving him nuts! He'd first noticed it during a battle over three months ago. At the time he'd just written it off as overactive imagination, but it kept happening. What really freaked him was that he had noticed the scrutiny on a couple of missions he'd run without his Gundam. The idea that someone was watching him that closely... and that knew his movements that well...

He hadn't mentioned it to any of the other pilots. There was simply no proof besides his intuition. The last thing he wanted was to be thought to be paranoid. Especially by the pilot of Shenlong. He could hear him now... "You are weak, Maxwell! You should not allow your imagination to override your sense like this." Duo sighed. Even worse was imagining the look of disgust that would be on his beautiful face.

"Just because I'm paranoid, doesn't mean they aren't out to get me," Duo muttered to himself. He shook his head, stood up straight and grinned. "And it's not my imagination. I was a street rat for years and I always knew if someone was keeping an eye on me, whether it was a store owner who didn't trust me, a dirty old man who was trying to pick me up or just Solo looking out for me. I *always* knew. And my training as a Gundam pilot just made that intuition stronger. I am *not* imagining things. Someone or something has been watching me. Something that doesn't show up on my scopes, but that just means that their cloaking or disguise is extremely good. It doesn't mean they're not there. And if there is someone around that can keep away from my sensors that well, then the others need to know."

He looked down on himself. "After DownTime."

DownTime was a routine that had started soon after they had started living at safe houses together. There was an unspoken rule that as long as the pilot was unharmed, the hours after he got back from a mission were his alone. No one would bother him as he relaxed and unwound in whatever way he considered best. If he wanted company, he had to go seek it out himself. Even Quatre and Trowa followed the guidelines, and while there were many times that one would walk into the safe house, head straight for the other and drag him upstairs, if that didn't happen they wouldn't see each other during those hours.

However, if a pilot came in and hid himself away for too long, one of the others, usually Quatre or Duo, would go drag them out of their lair. No one was allowed to sit and brood over a mission for more than a couple hours at a time. They all agreed on this, and even Heero had been known to leave his laptop long enough to go drag Trowa out of his room while Quatre and Duo were busy.

In fact, one of Duo's most precious memories was the time when Wufei had come to get him after a mission that went wrong. Although he'd come through alive, and managed to complete the primary mission, more people had died than expected or wanted and while part of the reason was faulty intelligence, part of it was simply his error. Wufei had come and actually talked to him, the conversation going on for what seemed like hours. By the time they left the room to go eat dinner with the others, Duo was feeling a lot better, and even Wufei's eyes didn't seem as haunted.

Duo shook himself free of the memories. He had his own routine for DownTime and didn't want to get too far behind. He turned on the water in the shower, allowing it to get hot as he undressed and unbraided his hair. After scrubbing his body completely, he started on his hair.

Even if it hadn't been for the memories inherent in the rope of hair that fell down his back, even if he'd never noticed that time he was *sure* he'd seen Wufei reach out to touch his braid as he was sitting next to him on the couch, even if he hadn't fought so hard for the right to keep it, even if none of that was true, *this* would be reason enough to keep his hair as long as it was. Washing it, conditioning it, drying it and especially brushing it put him into an almost meditative trance. His body caught up in the intricacies of dealing with his hair, his mind wandered where it would. He went over the mission just completed, the unseen watcher, and how good it would feel if it was Wufei's hands dealing with his hair, instead of his own. Not to mention, wasn't it amazing how his thoughts always turned to the other boy. Duo gently nudged his mind away from that thought. He was here to think about the mission, not his crush on the Chinese pilot.

After almost an hour of brushing, he finally started to wake up out of his trance and began to braid his hair. He laughed silently, wondering what Wufei would think of hair as a meditation tool. Then again, the other boy would probably be surprised to find out that Duo had any clue what meditation was, much less that he used it almost every night to order his mind. Even Heero, who he'd ended up sharing a room with in a number of different schools and safe houses didn't realize that he was doing anything more than wasting time he should be spending on more constructive pursuits. Sure, it wasn't exactly the traditional meditation tool, but hey, Duo wasn't exactly a traditional kid either.

With a grin, he threw on some clothes and turned to the next part of his routine, the mission report. Not for him the simple straightforward reports of the others. He liked to get as creative as possible while still telling the exact truth. It drove the doctors crazy.

Once that was done and sent off, he threw himself down on the bed to think about his crush. This last part of the routine was perhaps his favorite. It was a new part of the routine, having started only a couple of months ago, after the conversation in his room. It was that day that he started thinking of the pilot of Shenlong as a person instead of just another pilot. Not only a person, but a very beautiful, exotic, smart, honorable, sweet, sexy and kind person. Too bad the other's opinion of him didn't seem to change much. He was still more an annoyance to the Chinese youth than an object of affection. Oh well, he was working on it. Very slowly and carefully, but he *was* working on it. He just had to make sure that Wufei felt the same. Or at the very least, that he wouldn't kill him for feeling that way. Even worse was the possibility that the black haired youth would hate him for it. Never having him as a lover would be far better than losing the possibility of him as a friend. Oh well, until then he could always fantasize.

His hands had just started to ghost down his body when he glanced at the clock and cursed. It was time to get up if he wanted to make it to dinner on time. For a moment, he gave a thought to just staying in his room and seeing if Wufei would come to pull him downstairs, but he thought better of the idea. After all, he had something to talk to the other pilots about. Besides, if Wufei did come up and found there was nothing wrong with him, he would probably get lectured at, and that was the last thing he wanted at the moment. With a sigh, he pulled himself to his feet and let the mask he'd been without since the moment he stepped into the shower, settle once more over his being.

Duo skipped down the stairs and ran into the dining room. "Hey everybody! What's to eat? I'm starving!"

"You're always starving, Maxwell," Wufei grumbled.

"I'm a growing boy, Wu-man," Duo grinned at him. "Maybe if you ate more, you'd finally get around to growing too."

"Maxwell!" Wufei growled in return.

Quatre hid his giggles behind his hand as Trowa let a smile touch one side of his mouth. Heero seemed to be oblivious to the taunting, being more interested in other things.

"How did the mission go?" he asked.

"Mission completed successfully sir," Duo threw a playful salute.

During the dinner, he and Quatre chattered back and forth with Wufei occasionally throwing in a comment. It wasn't until Heero stood up to go back to his room that Duo brought up what else had happened. He allowed his grin to fall from his face. "Something did happen that we need to talk about," he said seriously.

One glance at his face convinced the others that this was not a joke. Duo never looked that grim unless it was serious. Without hesitation the others followed him into the living room.

"Over the last three months or so I've been noticing something. It only happens when I'm on a mission alone, and not always then. Someone's been watching me, I'm sure of it. I can't prove it, unfortunately, but I know it's true. I've gone over every bit of video Deathscythe's video cameras can pick up and never seen anything. I've run every test possible with my systems, and a couple that I had to specially install, before, during and after a battle. And come up with nothing." Duo started pacing. "If it had just happened once, I could chalk it up to an overactive imagination, but it's happened too many times. I spent too long as a thief not to know when I'm being watched, and I am not making this up!" He reached back and jerked on his braid in aggravation.

"Calm down, Duo," Quatre spoke up. "No one thinks you're making it up." He glared at Heero and Wufei who were sitting there with expressions of disbelief on their faces. "Do we?" The two pilots

blanked their faces and shook their heads. "We trust your instincts, Duo."

"Thanks Quatre, that means a lot." Duo's smile was real and Quatre found himself smiling back. Seeing that expression on the braided pilot's face was very rare, and Quatre treated it like the precious gift it was.

"I'm assuming from your expressions that no one else has noticed anything," Duo sighed.

The others nodded silently in agreement.

Duo threw himself down on the couch next to Wufei. "I thought for a while that it was OZ, trying to get information on myself and Deathscythe to use against me. However, that doesn't explain why I can only feel it when I'm by myself, you'd think they'd want info on all the pilots. Besides, some of the places, there's no way they could know in advance that I would be there. Not unless there's a leak somewhere, but that doesn't make any sense either, because if there was it would make much more sense to set up traps that just to watch."

"Did it feel like a camera?" Trowa asked quietly.

Duo thought about it for a while, then shook his head slowly. "No, I don't think so. It was too *there* to be a camera, you know? Though that'd certainly be easier to hide than a person. And that's another thing. If it is OZ, then the cloaking's got to be seriously good for me and Deathscythe not to be able to see it. As in, if they get that kind of shielding for their mobile dolls we're in deep shit."

"I've seen no indication of either a better cloaking device or pilot surveillance within OZ's computers, nor have the doctors said anything about it," Heero put in.

"Maybe a reporter trying to get information on a story?" Quatre suggested.

"That still leaves all those pesky how questions. How would they know where I am, how do they keep from being seen, how do they keep from showing on my instruments?" Duo sighed, gazing despondently off into the distance. For some unknown reason, the side of the distance just happened to look like Wufei's profile.

"Not to mention why you," Wufei added.

A grin crossed Duo's face as he thought of something, and he sat up. "Hey, maybe I have a fan! That'd be cool."

"Hn." The expression on Heero's face made it clear that that was a 'Yeah right' type of 'hn' instead of one of the other hundred definitions of the sound.

Duo stuck out his tongue at him.

"Perhaps you shouldn't go on any missions for a while," Quatre suggested quietly.

"No way!" Duo surged up out of his seat. "I'm not going to let some crazy guy who won't even show his face scare me into being grounded!"

"Then what do you suggest?" Trowa asked placidly.

"I don't know," Duo started pacing again. "I really just wanted to tell you because of the ECM possibility. I don't see what we can really do about him since we don't know who it is."

"Then we need to find out," Wufei suggested. "Maybe we can set up a trap of some type."

"How about if you don't go on any solo missions until we figure something out?" Quatre asked worriedly.

"Guys, maybe we're making too much out of this, I mean, it has been going on for three months, and nothing bad has ever happened. Maybe he just likes to watch." Duo grinned lewdly.

"Or maybe he's just waiting until he has enough information to make sure he can kill you easily. Or worse." Wufei quelled him. "I agree, you should not go on anymore solo missions until we're sure it's safe."

"Why Wu-man, I didn't know you cared," Duo grinned. Inside he was dancing, it sounded like Wufei really did care, at least as a friend. And that was better than what he had, wasn't it?

Wufei snorted. "I just wish to make sure that you're around for missions that require all five of us."

"Do you agree, Duo?" Quatre asked pleadingly.

Duo looked into those soft blue eyes and caved immediately. "All right, all right, no more solo missions for a while, at least not unless absolutely necessary."

"Thanks you Duo! I feel much better now," Quatre grinned. Trowa nodded his agreement as well.

"Yeah, yeah," Duo headed for the door. "I'm going to go work on Deathscythe for a while. See you guys later." When he reached the door, he hesitated for a moment. Without turning around he said softly, "Thanks for believing me, all of you." Not waiting for an answer, he left the house.

/_So he noticed I've been watching, hmm? Oh well, I knew he had some degree of empathy, so I shouldn't be surprised. It should be interesting to see what kind of trap they think can capture the God of Death._/ He chuckled silently, then his thoughts grew dark. /_But what were those looks he was giving *him*? He had better not be interested in someone else. He's mine!_/


	2. Chapter 2

Very short part today. But sorry, I'm just not in the mood to figure out how many parts I should put in. It will get longer, I promise.

Part 2 of ?

Duo was sitting quietly in front of his Gundam as Wufei Chang walked into the hanger. He was looking off into the distance, his face solemn and a little worried. Wufei frowned slightly. That was not an expression that was common to the braided pilot's face, and he did not wish to see it there any more.

"Maxwell," Wufei said softly.

Instantly the mask dropped back down. Duo looked up with a lighthearted grin. "Yo, Wu-man, what'cha doing out here? Come to worship Nataku?"

Wufei's frown became more pronounced. The expression on Duo's face was more familiar, but it was fake. That was obvious from how quickly it came once the pilot knew he was there. At least he had been sure the other expression was real, as little as he wished to see it.

"Do you often feel like smiling?" Wufei asked intently as he settled down next to him.

"N-nani?" Duo asked in confusion. "What do you mean? I smile all the time!"

"But how often do you actually *feel* like smiling?" Wufei stressed the word feel even as he stared straight into confused violet eyes.

Duo glanced away. The confusion in his eyes was nothing to what was going through his head. Wufei was actually asking him something about the him behind his mask? What brought this on? What did it mean? Why did he want to know? And most important, what should he say? After all, just because he didn't lie, didn't mean he had to tell the truth. But this was Wufei, and he seemed interested in knowing him. Did he dare to take the chance of baring part of his soul? Did he dare not to?

"Mostly," Duo said quietly, letting the smile fall from his face, but still facing away from the Chinese youth. "There's always something to smile about, if you look hard enough. Life can be an amazing thing, you know. And enjoying it is a lot more fun than moping about."

"But you call yourself Death, and you seem to love it," Wufei kept his voice quiet and unaccusing, just stating a fact. Duo was actually opening up to him and there was no way he was going to give up this chance to know him better because Duo took his words the wrong way.

"Of course," Duo said easily. His smile was back on his face as he turned and looked at the other. "How can I not? It's a part of life. If I love one, I've got to love the other. They can't exist without each other you know. If there was no Death, why would you need to appreciate life? And as long as there's a reason for the death, then it truly is a wonderful thing. A rabbit dies to feed a wolf, a wolf dies and his body becomes compost to feed the plants, plants die to feed a rabbit, who dies to feed a wolf. Why mourn the rabbit, when you know what all will come with his death?"

"The circle of life," Wufei murmured.

Duo's eyes flew wide open and he whipped his head so quickly towards the other boy that his braid made a whooshing sound through the air. His mouth opened and closed in disbelief for a moment before he finally managed to get it out. "You... you've seen 'The Lion King'?" His voice almost squeaked at the end of the question he was so shocked.

"What are you talking about Maxwell?" Wufei's eyebrows almost met his hair.

"You know, the circle of life is from that old American movie, 'The Lion King'. How else would you know it?"

"For your information, 'the circle of life' is a term used to describe the food chain. It's especially used by African and Native American primitive tribes. All people who lived off of or close to the land used that term or a similar one. If your movie used it as well, then it likely received the idea from research of ancient tribal groups."

"So you're saying you've never seen 'The Lion King'?" Duo asked.

"No, Maxwell, I have not, as you said, seen 'The Lion King'." Wufei sighed.

"Well then come on! I think Quatre's got a copy around here somewhere. You'll love it, I promise." Duo jumped to his feet and grabbed Wufei's wrist, dragging him inside.

The Chinese pilot gave a token protest but let himself be dragged. It looked like he wouldn't be getting any more insights into the other boy right now, so he might as well give in. How bad could it be? He

looked at the manic grin of the boy in front of him. Did he really wish to know?


	3. Chapter 3

I might have to rethink the Monday/Thursday thing. Now that I"m working again, I can't get to it until late. I'll try to keep on track with the days, but it's going to be at night instead of in the afternoon like it was during the summer.

Part 3 of ?

Duo danced around his room, chuckling. Wufei had been so kawaii when watching the movie! His little rant over the injustice of Scar convincing Simba that Mufasa's death was his fault! And how annoyed he got when Timon and Pumbaa tried to convince Simba that "No Worries" was the best philosophy to follow! And regardless of what the other pilot said, he *knew* he'd seen a tear in his eye when Mufasa died. Duo hugged himself laughing. Fei-chan was just so, so cute!

This had been the best night he could remember for a long long time. He had the other boy's complete attention for a while, and since he had already seen the movie several times he had been able to pay more attention to Wufei's expression as he got caught up in the story. And they had talked. Well, he had talked, but still... He hadn't started the conversation. Wufei came to him after all.

Duo fell back onto the bed. He went over and over every moment of the night, engraving it into his memory. Going over it for the fourth time he drifted into sleep, a smile still on his face.

After that night, the relationship between the two pilots seemed to improve. They might not be lovers, but there was very little doubt they were becoming friends. Duo could even get Wufei to crack a smile every once in a while.

Life was going wonderful for Death's pilot. Except for one thing. Since he had agreed not to take any solo missions, those were being farmed out to others. This caused two side effects, both of which Duo considered problems. Number one, the others were going out more often, which meant they spent less time at the safe house, and therefore he was able to spend less time with Wufei. Problem number two was the fact he was taking fewer missions meant spending more time grounded and less time in his Gundam.

"Hey Duo!" Quatre called as he came into the room. "A two person mission just came in, you want to go with me?"

Duo bounced out of his chair and was standing in front of the other pilot before he even finished the question.

"I take it that's a yes," Quatre laughed lightly.

Duo was already halfway out of the room. "Yes, yes, come on, let's go!"

"Thank you," Wufei smiled at him. "He was going crazy stuck here. Much longer and somebody would have killed him just to get him to shut up." He pointed with his head to the pilot of Wing off in the corner of the room.

Quatre nodded in agreement and was about to say something else, when Duo's voice rang through the house. "QUATRE! COME ON! WE NEED TO GET GOING!"

"Coming, Duo!" Quatre called back, before throwing a wave at the pilots left behind and running towards the impatiently waiting violet eyed one.

The mission was straightforward enough. There was a convoy transporting completed Taurus' to the pilot training center. It was their job to destroy the convoy before the Mobile Suits could get pilots and become dangerous.

It was while they were fighting with the convoy guards that Duo first felt it again. He commed over to his partner. "He's here, Quatre."

The blond pilot looked at him through the communications panel. His face was fearful and his hand was pressed against his heart. "I can feel him. There's something very very wrong with him. He's deadly, Duo. Dangerous to you."

"Hey, I'm Shinigami! I can take care of myself!" Duo's expression was all wounded pride.

Quatre shook his head. "Not against him. Please, Duo, don't go after him yourself. Let's just finish this mission and go home. Please, Duo. Please!"

Duo's blood ran cold. Quatre was obviously very, very scared. Despite the fact that he was considered the weakest of all the pilots, Duo knew the strength, both physical and mental, that hid behind that sweet facade. For him to show this amount of fear...

"All right Quatre. But put your video cameras on. Maybe with both Sandrock and Deathscythe we'll get something this time."

Quatre nodded sharply and turned back to what he had been doing. The unseen observer weighed heavily on both of their minds as they dealt with the weaker Mobile Suits. Up until now, the feeling of being watched had bothered Duo only because he didn't know who it was. He had never truly felt threatened. Quatre's reaction however, fueled his own worries. Now he could feel it too, a veritable aura of danger reaching out towards him. Every moment they stayed nearby, it got worse, pushing at their minds and emotions as if it was trying to get in, casting a heavy cloak of darkness over their minds and bodies. It was all they could do to push it away long enough to finish the mission unharmed.

It wasn't until the Gundams were hidden away in their hanger that the malevolent aura finally faded. The two talkative pilots headed inside without a word. They both knew what they needed, a light to combat the dark they had felt. Quatre hit the living room first, without a word he walked over to his lover. Trowa smiled slightly at the young blonde until he caught sight of his face.

"Quatre?" he asked softly.

"Hold me, please?" Quatre whispered as he crawled into Trowa's lap.

The silent pilot didn't hesitate to wrap his arms around the boy shivering in his lap.

Duo headed straight for his love, but stopped in front of him, hesitating.

"Duo?" Wufei asked in confusion.

Duo just stood there, his eyes begging for something, but the Chinese pilot didn't know what.

Wufei looked around, hoping for inspiration. He looked into the deep green glaring eye of the banged pilot. "Hold him, stupid!" Trowa mouthed.

Shenlong's pilot decided it couldn't hurt, and reached towards the pilot of Deathscythe. He hadn't even gotten his hands totally raised when he found himself with a lap full of silent, shivering youth. Instinct took over, as he wrapped his arms around the trembling bundle in his arms. He started stroking his hair and murmuring soothingly.

Duo couldn't believe where he was and what was happening. Fei-chan was actually holding him. Too bad it had to be because he was scared out of his mind. He decided not to think about it and just snuggled in closer, allowing the comfort and warmth he felt in Wufei's arms to chase out the last of the cold the watcher had left.

"What happened?" Heero asked, since it seemed that every one else was busy.

Quatre pushed himself deeper into his koi's lap even as he raised his head to answer. "The watcher, Duo's watcher. He was there. He's... evil!"

Duo nodded his head where it rested against Wufei's neck. "It's never been like that before. Always before it was just watching, it didn't really seem bad. But this time," he shivered as his voice drifted off.

"We could feel him. It was awful, really truly awful. I don't think I've ever been that scared. Whoever it was, I don't think he was human. He felt more evil than... than..." Quatre tried to think.

"Than Lady Une in her "Bitch of the Universe" personality," Duo suggested.

"Exactly," Quatre replied.

"This really disturbed you, didn't it?" Wufei asked softly. He was trying his hardest not to think about how nice Duo felt in his arms and how soft his hair felt as he stroked down the braid. Duo was here for comfort and did *not* need any more than that. Wufei managed to keep his body under control by thinking of nothing but the danger Duo seemed to be in. After all, if he let it do as it wished at the moment, Duo would be in the perfect position to tell. /_And that is quite enough of that kind of thinking,_/ he commanded himself.

Duo drew back and made as if to get up, but Wufei tightened his arms. "That was not an insult, Maxwell, it was simply a request for information." He sighed silently in relief as Duo settled back down. The last thing he wanted was to accidentally insult Duo. He had seen the fright in the two pilots eyes, and knowing what they had gone through before without a whimper and he knew the state they were in now was worrying all of the pilots. They needed information if they were to get to the bottom of this.

"Yeah, it did. I've never felt anything like that before, Fei-chan." Duo didn't notice Wufei's eyes fly open in shock at the nickname. "I've run across plenty of people I would consider evil. I've had them look at me, too, and known it wasn't for any good reason. But this... if it wasn't so crazy, I'd say it was a demon or something."

Quatre nodded in total agreement from his seat across the room.

"Demons don't exist," Heero remarked.

"I know that, that's why I said 'if it wasn't so crazy'," Duo put up his head long enough to stick out his tongue at the cobalt eyed boy, before ducking back down into his safe haven.

"Sandrock and Deathscythe both had their recorders going, we should go over the video," Quatre said with a sigh. "But not until after I get a shower. I feel like I'm tainted or something." Reluctantly he stood up, grabbed Trowa's hand and led him out of the room.

Duo felt an overwhelming need to get clean as soon as Quatre mentioned it. There was only one problem. Going to take a shower meant getting off his very comfortable seat. Who knew when he would get a chance like this again? Then again, Wufei was probably getting impatient and was just too polite to tell him to get off. With another soundless sigh, Duo started pulling back. For a moment, it seemed the Chinese boy wasn't going to let him go, before his arms released and Duo stood up.

Not letting himself think, Duo bent down and brushed his lips against those of the other pilot. "Thank you," he whispered.

He almost ran out the door, refusing to look back and see what expression was on his friend's face. If he had, he would have seen Wufei sitting, completely stunned, with one hand raised to his lips, as if to try to touch the kiss he had just been given.

Heero snorted in amusement as he passed by the glassy eyed, shocked still teen.

Shinigami was shocked as well. Not from the kiss, though that had stunned him, he would *deal* with it later. There were slightly more important things to handle at the moment. No, what shocked the God of Death was the description of the watcher. *He* was the only one who was supposed to watch his Duo like that, but he had been nowhere near the battle. That meant someone else was wanting his priest. Someone beyond human to scare the two pilots that way. And that would *not* be allowed. No mortal could ever truly be a threat to his claiming of the youth, and no immortal would be so stupid. At least, not again.


	4. Chapter 4

Sorry this is late. I'm seriously thinking about moving this to Sunday instead of Monday. Perhaps I won't be so busy then, like I sometimes am on Mondays.

Part 4 of ?

It was several minutes before Wufei finally pulled out of his immobility. He looked around, a little surprised to find himself alone in the room. For an instant more he looked bewildered, then

his expression firmed. Standing up almost violently, he headed for the stairs, going up without hesitation and striding firmly towards Duo's door. And stopped. Once there he seemed to argue with himself, several times turning away, until he finally got up the courage to knock. And waited. There was no answer. He knocked again, more firmly this time. There was still no answer.

The Chinese pilot looked up and down the hallway as if trying to decide what to do next. He reached for the doorknob, then pulled his hand back. It would be an unhonorable breach of privacy to go in without an invitation, but... With a scowl at his own wishy-washyness, he opened the door and strode in without another seconds hesitation.

Duo walked out of the bathroom wearing nothing but a towel around his hips and another around his hair. He jerked to a stop as he saw Wufei entering the room, scowling. He sighed and dropped his eyes, totally missing the way the other boy's eyes had widened in surprise, pleasure and hunger.

Wufei quickly glanced away. He hadn't expected this. The idea that Duo might have been in the shower had never occurred to him. It was all he could do not to reach out and touch all of that beautiful silky skin. He clenched his hands into fists to keep from tearing off that towel and seeing the rest.

Duo's downcast eyes saw Wufei's hands curl into fists, and adding it to the scowl on his face when he walked in, came to only one conclusion. But the other boy didn't move. Finally, Duo lost his patience. "Will you just go ahead and deck me?"

Wufei's head jerked up. Once more, Duo had totally shocked him. Before he could get a word out, Duo was talking.

"Look, I'm sorry I kissed you okay? I wasn't thinking and I didn't really mean to. I'm sorry if it disgusted you or whatever, but will you just go ahead and hit me and get it over with?"

Wufei frowned fiercely and took a step closer to the other boy. His hand came up towards Duo's face and he flinched, before forcing himself to stand still. But the hand only touched his chin, forcing his head up. Unwillingly, he looked into deep chocolate eyes. Deep chocolate eyes that didn't seem to be mad at all.

"Are you listening to me, Duo Maxwell?" Wufei said almost savagely.

Duo nodded as best he could with the hand still holding his chin up.

"I would never be so unjust as to hit you for expressing your feelings, especially at a time like that. What I want to know, is did you mean it?"

This time it was Duo's turn to be shocked speechless.

When Duo didn't answer, Wufei nodded and dropped his hand away. "So, it was just a moment's aberration." He turned and walked to the door.

As he reached for the handle, Duo finally got his act together. "No!" he almost shouted. He strode over to the other pilot and put his hand up as if to touch him, but didn't quite dare. Instead his hand hovered over his shoulder as he continued softly. "I meant it."

As Wufei turned to look at him, the still hovering hand brushed against his cheek. Duo started to draw it away, but Wufei reached up and pressed it to his cheek, leaning slightly against it.

Duo gulped, but started to speak. "I wanted to kiss you," he said in almost a whisper. "I've wanted it for a while. But we were finally becoming friends, and I didn't want to lose that so I never said anything. But you'd been so nice. You didn't have to hold me, down there. I wanted it, but I didn't expect it. And you were so gentle and I wanted to thank you, and I wanted to kiss you, and I never wanted to have to get out of your lap. I didn't really mean to kiss you, I wasn't thinking about it. But I did mean the kiss. I'd been dreaming about kissing you."

Wufei smiled only slightly, but Duo was still caught in it, for the other boy's eyes were glowing with happiness. "So, how did it compare?" Wufei asked slyly.

"Huh?" Duo asked, still caught in his eyes.

"The kiss, how did it compare to your dreams?"

Duo finally started to truly hope. "Well, it was a little short," he smiled, a true smile, and Wufei, like Quatre before him, knew what it for the gift it was. "To make a decent comparison I mean," Duo continued.

"Does that mean you require more experimentation?" Wufei's eyes were dancing, and Duo was still caught. These were expressions he'd never expected to see on Nataku's pilot. Expressions he didn't think anyone else had ever seen either, and he gathered them into his memory like rare gems.

"I think it's only fair. We wouldn't want the test results to be tainted by inaccurate information, would we?"

Still not quite believing it was happening, but not about to give up the chance, Duo stepped closer. Slowly, he brought their heads together until their lips pressed against each other. It was a sweet, chaste kiss, for a moment. Surprisingly, it was Wufei who took it to the next level, opening his mouth slightly, and teasing Duo into opening his.

Their tongues danced back and forth, not battling for dominance, but just trying to experience the most they could. Wufei raised his hands to Duo's back. The feel of warm, bare skin under his fingertips was like a shock to the system. Instantly the kiss changed as lust flared. Wufei's hands clutched tighter as his mouth became more demanding, the kiss transforming from soft and sweet to hot, hard and needy.

Duo whimpered slightly even as he opened more for the invasion. His hands moved, one clutching the other boy closer, the other reaching to pull out the hairband and burying his hand in the satin strands of his love's hair.

/_**I think not.**_/

Duo yawned. His eyes widened in comic disbelief that he would do so while being kissed.

Wufei chuckled as he backed away. "Was it so boring, then?"

Duo shook his head violently. "Nuh-uh. It was... oh man, it was better than I dreamed. But I think I need more evidence." He grinned widely.

Wufei looked at the vision in front of him. How could anyone possibly resist him? Dressed only in a towel, his skin flushed and glowing from arousal, his eyes violet pools deep enough to drown in, his lips moist, parted and deeply red... and yawning. Wufei aborted his move towards the other at this evidence that he was obviously more tired than he thought.

Duo pouted as his eyes drooped. It was an absolutely adorable sight, though Wufei found himself thinking he looked like a young child with that expression on his face.

"I don't know why I'm suddenly so *yawn* tired," Duo brought up one hand to cover his mouth. "I wanted to kiss some more."

Wufei leaned forward and brushed a kiss against the pouting lips in front of him. "If you're this tired then you need to get some sleep."

"But..." Duo could hardly keep his eyes open.

"You would be no good to us if you fall asleep in the middle of a mission," Wufei admonished. He saw the flash of hurt in the purple slivers that were all he could see of Duo's eyes. He quickly added, "besides, it's hard to kiss you when you're yawning, and I want you to enjoy it as much as I will." His reward was a repeat of that perfect smile before Duo yawned once more and swayed on his feet. Wufei jumped forward to catch him. "Let's get you into bed before you fall down," he urged.

"Why Wufei, you're so forward. Trying to get me into bed already? I don't put out on the first date you know." Duo joked even as he climbed into the bed Wufei had considerately turned down.

Wufei blushed brightly even as he pulled the covers up to Duo's chin. "Gonna read me a bed time story too, Fei-chan?" Duo murmured as he slipped into sleep.

"Anything you wish, beautiful one," Wufei whispered, bending to ghost a kiss across Duo's forehead. He walked to the door and took one more look back, before walking out and closing it behind him.


	5. Chapter 5

On time, yay! Hope you enjoy!

Part 5 of ?

The next day started early. Very early. Much too early as far as Duo was concerned. But a Heero Yuy banging on their doors at five o'clock in the morning to tell them there was a mission, was not a person to be argued with. Duo cursed as he tried to deal with hair that had been left free and wet all night. Finally, after Heero yelled at him to get moving, for the fourth time, he just pulled it back into a tangled pony tail. The expression on his face as he went downstairs stopped anyone else from saying anything about it. He was *not* a happy pilot. Not only was his hair not in its customary and traditional braid, but it was going to take hours to get all the tangles out when he finally got time to deal with it.

The mission wasn't terribly dangerous, but it was long. The base they had gone to destroy was several hours away from the safehouse, and they spent several more hours making sure they weren't followed back there. All in all they didn't get back until almost seven that night. The worse part, at least in Deathscythe's pilot's view, was the fact that they left before breakfast in the morning, hadn't had time to stop for lunch and hadn't yet had dinner! He was hungry! And his friends were very well aware of the fact that he was hungry. As well as the fact that his hair was a mess and would take hours to untangle, the fact that the base hadn't been tough enough to warrant all of them being there, the fact that Deathscythe's right leg hadn't responded as well as it should, and, of course, the fact that he was utterly bored. He was very good at getting facts such as these across, especially when he was far enough away that Heero couldn't hit him to make him shut up.

As they entered the safehouse, Heero started to stalk towards the talkative boy, but a glare from Wufei made him decide against anything physical. Instead he just muttered "Omae o karasu" as he stomped by. Quatre informed the others that dinner would be ready in about an hour and headed towards the kitchen with Trowa right behind him.

"If you go get your brush, I'll help you with your hair," Wufei suggested.

Duo stared at him, shocked.

"If you prefer that I don't, I understand," Wufei said, reading the look wrong.

"No, no," Duo said quickly. "It's just... well, no one's ever... not since..." he stopped babbling and took a deep breath. "I'd appreciate it if you would help me with my hair," he said almost formally.

Wufei nodded and Duo raced upstairs. Less than a minute later, he came back down, stopping halfway. "Um... Fei-chan?" he gulped.

The Chinese pilot had already started up the stairs. He had begun moving as soon as he saw the pale complexion that had just been almost blushing. "What's the matter, Duo?" he asked as he reached him.

"Do you have a really weird sense of the romantic?" Duo's voice gained strength as the color came back to his skin.

"I don't believe so," Wufei said softly. "Why do you ask?"

"You didn't leave me something in my room?" Duo asked.

Wufei shook his head.

"So," Duo said softly, his gaze hardening. "Heero Yuy! I'm going to kill you!" He suddenly shouted.

Heero walked calmly out of his room and stared down at the two boys on the stairs as Quatre and Trowa came out from the kitchen. "What are you babbling about now?" he asked.

"That... that... 'gift' you left in my room!" Duo snarled.

"What are you talking about? I haven't been near your room." Heero glared back.

"Besides, when would he have had time to?" Quatre asked reasonably. "We've all been gone all day."

"Well, *somebody* went into my room, because it sure wasn't like that when I left!"

All traces of levity were swept from everyone's faces at those words. Heero immediately headed towards Duo's room with the other pilots right behind him. Heero flung open the door, and stopped, completely shocked. Quatre gasped, but the others were too busy staring with their mouths open.

Every conceivable surface was covered with flowers, mostly roses in shades of black and blood red. Quatre headed towards one bouquet that held centerstage on the dresser. Something seemed to be different with it. It was as he got closer that he noticed the smell and the liquid shine. At his cry of distress, Trowa came and gathered him up, noticing what had bothered him.

"These have been dipped in blood," he told the others.

Wufei was staring at the writing over the head of the bed. 'My love,' was written there in what looked like red paint, still dripping. He reached out to touch it, then brought it back to smell. "This is blood too," he said, almost too himself. He turned to the others, his eyes blazing with rage. "Whoever did this,*will* be brought to Justice!" he growled out.

Heero had more important things to worry about. "The alarms were all set when we came in. There was no indication that someone had infiltrated the house."

"The blood was still fresh," Wufei said, still seething.

"Quatre, Trowa, check the bottom floor. Wufei, Duo, make sure there's no one on this floor, and check the other rooms. I'll take the attic."

The others nodded and split up to check their assigned areas. Thirty minutes later, they met in the kitchen. They wolfed down sandwiches as they made their reports.

"Mine was the only room that was touched as far as me and Wufei could tell," Duo announced after he swallowed the bite he was eating. Not even seeing his room like that could stop his appetite for long. "But we stopped by my room just before we came down. The blood hadn't even started to dry."

"There's also no sign of blood anywhere except on the wall and flowers. Not even drops. I took a sample for analysis. I thought we could give it to Sally Po, and see what she thought of it." Wufei reported.

"I can have my doctors look at it if you like," Quatre suggested. "Detailed analysis will take a while, but they should be able to tell if it's human or animal very quickly."

Wufei nodded as he handed over the vial.

"Who would do something like this? And why? And for goodness sake, why me?" Duo grouched.

"The watcher," Trowa suggested.

Quatre nodded quickly. "That's what I believe too. But it means he's been watching you on more than just the battlefield. We didn't find anything either. No drops of blood, no smudges, nothing. Whoever it is, he's good."

"But what does he *want*?" Duo almost whined.

"Maybe this is his version of a seduction attempt," Heero suggested with a hint of a smirk.

Wufei glared at him. "That does seem the likeliest scenario, considering he wrote 'my love' on Duo's wall."

"The question is how dangerous is he, and how far will he go?" Quatre reminded them.

"As well as how he got into the house without setting off the alarms," Heero almost growled. He was not happy with the thought that someone had circumvented his security system.

"And do we stay here and try to catch him, or move to a new safehouse, or a combination of the two?" Wufei asked.

"Maybe I should go off by myself for a while," Duo suggested.

"No!" came from three throats. Wufei was a bit more direct. "Not a chance in hell," he growled, reaching over and grabbing Duo's wrist as if to physically keep him in place. "You're going to be where we can watch out for you. This guy's obviously a psycho, there's no way we're going to let him get anywhere near you."

"And if one of you gets hurt because this guy's after me? Uh-uh, I don't think so. I'm not going to let that happen." Duo's voice was adamant and very serious. "I need to take care of this."

"And how are you going to do that? We don't know how he found this place, we don't know how he got in, and we're not absolutely sure what he wants!"

"Yes, we do, he wants me. Let's set a trap, I'll be the bait."

"Not without a whole lot more info than we've got right now, and a way to make it absolutely safe."

"Fei-chan, I'm a Gundam pilot! Absolutely safe is not in my vocabulary."

"No. I forbid it."

The other pilots winced. There were worse things Wufei could have said, they supposed, but right off hand they couldn't think what they might be.

"You do what?" Duo screeched. "Who do you think you are? My #$% keeper? You think that just because we kissed yesterday you can suddenly decide what I can and can't do? I don't %$##$ think so!" Duo shoved his chair back and stood up in Wufei's face. "Just because I love you doesn't give you any rights over me you jerk." He stormed out of the kitchen and out of the house.


	6. Chapter 6

Here's the next part! Enjoy!

Part 6 of ?

The other three pilots shook their heads at the Chinese one.

"Go after him," Heero told him.

"Grovel," was Trowa's advice.

"A present of some sort would probably be good too, Wufei," was Quatre's suggestion. "You really messed up there. You're going to have to do some heavy duty begging to get him to talk to you again."

Wufei still sat looking at the door Duo had left through.

"Wufei?" Quatre asked concerned.

Slowly Wufei turned to look at the others. His eyes were almost blank. "He loves me?" he said in a shocked tone of voice.

Quatre facefaulted. "You didn't hear a word we said, did you?"

"Yeah, yeah, grovel, present... he loves me?" Wufei's voice had just a tinge of wonder under the shock.

"Yes! He loves you! Now go talk to him before he gets madder and stops!" Quatre practically growled.

The unusual tone of Quatre's voice had Wufei up and moving before he even thought. He ran upstairs and grabbed a couple of things off his dresser before heading downstairs and out into the garden. He didn't stop until he saw Duo in front of him.

The violet eyed pilot was glaring at a piece of wood he was systematically turning into splinters. He didn't look as if he had cooled down at all. Wufei took a deep breath and stepped forward.

"Will you still let me help you with your hair?" he asked, holding up the brush as a peace offering.

Duo glared at him, then snatched the brush from his hands and started attacking the knots in his hair as if they were all the problems he had.

Wufei sighed and sank to the ground beside him. "I'm sorry?" he said tentatively.

Duo ignored him.

"I wasn't trying to control you, I was just worried. I am allowed to worry right? After all, if you care for someone you're supposed to worry and try to protect them even if you're trying to protect them from doing something stupid themselves."

Duo's hands had slowed as Wufei spoke and now he gave him a sideways glance. "You're losing points," he pointed out.

"I thought I was already in the hole," Wufei said, hiding his relief that Duo was talking to him again and trying desperately to keep the conversation going in a light vein.

"Nope, you got out of it with the sorry and the caring for part, but you're heading back in with the stupid stuff stuff." Duo grinned slightly.

Wufei reached over and touched the brush, smiling slightly when it was released into his hands. Slowly and carefully he started working through the bottom of the long hair as he spoke. "I do care for you and that means I don't want you to get hurt. Surely you can understand that?"

Duo nodded carefully. "Of course I do. I care for you too, and I don't want you hurt either, but that doesn't make me your master." He grinned lasciviously. "Unless you want me to be of course."

"I think not," Wufei mock growled as he pulled hard at one of the tangles.

"Ow!" Duo glared back at his love as he grabbed the back of his head.

"I have no wish to become your master," Wufei told him, working his way slowly up the hair. "However, you can't blame me for not wanting to lose you to a suicide mission, can you?"

"It wouldn't be a suicide mission," Duo responded.

"You don't know that. All we know is that someone's been stalking you. He scared both you and Quatre. *And* he managed to get into our safehouse, without setting off any alarms and set up that sick exhibit in that room. Now, I don't know what that tells you, but to me it says that this guy is dangerous as well as psychotic, and we need to take extra precautions, not insane risks. I also think that part of caring for you is telling you when you're making a stupid decision. Just as I'd expect you to tell me."

"Okay. Well then, telling me you forbid me to do something is a really, really stupid decision," Duo informed him.

"I believe I figured that out," Wufei said seriously, causing them both to laugh. By now Wufei had managed to get out all of the tangles and was simply brushing the hair for the pure pleasure of running his hands through the softness. Neither seemed to notice or care.

"Am I forgiven then?" Wufei asked softly as they calmed down.

Duo nodded. "Just don't do it again."

Duo sighed happily and leaned back into the hands that were now more petting his hair than brushing it. He'd been really pissed when he came out, but now he was happy. Not only had Fei-chan come out and apologized, *apologized! The never wrong, lord of Justice actually apologized!* but he'd talked! And said important stuff! Caring stuff! Even now their conversations tended to be more Duo talking

and Wufei listening, though he would come up with good questions and if it was something that was important to him he could lecture for hours, but this time he'd actually talked most, without lecturing. He didn't think that'd ever happened before. And he knew that Wufei Chang had never apologized before. Then he thought back over their conversation and stiffened slightly.

"What's the matter?" Wufei asked, picking up the new tension.

"N...nothing," Duo shook his head. Absentmindedly, he reached back and started braiding his shining hair.

Wufei frowned at having his new toy taken away and the stutter in Duo's voice. "Duo, you don't lie remember?"

Duo twisted quickly to look at the other boy. "I wasn't lying!" he admonished.

Wufei *looked* at him. "Even in meditation and sleep it's not possible for a mind to truly be thinking of *nothing*. There is always some thought drifting around whether you wish it to or not. I suppose you could have been thinking of the state of nothingness, but I find that unlikely."

Duo could feel a chuckle trying to get out and bit it back, allowing only his eyes to show his delight at the small joke. "How about 'none of your business' as an answer?"

Wufei opened his mouth to answer, but the braided boy held up his hand to stop him. "Or how about, 'I'm not going to tell you right now, so don't bother asking'?" he smirked.

Wufei nodded calmly. "As you wish."

That reminded Duo of another old movie he watched, and brought him right back to the thread of thought he was trying to ignore. Wufei had said he cared for him. Several times in fact. That should be enough, shouldn't it? So why was he so caught up in the fact that he hadn't actually said the 'l' word? Just because he'd said it himself didn't mean that Wufei had to say it too. Chances were that the Chinese pilot hadn't even heard him say it. Maybe that's why he hadn't said anything. He hadn't heard Duo say it so he wasn't sure what Duo felt and didn't want to impose too much. He ignored the little voice in the back of his head that was trying to remind him that Wufei Chang, who was as close to perfect as it was possible to be if you weren't Heero Yuy, would not miss something like that.

"Wufei?" Duo asked quietly.

"Hmm?"

"Do you love me?" Duo held his breath waiting for an answer.

"I

"Wufei! Duo!" Quatre's voice broke the moment and they turned to see him waving them back into the house. Duo could almost swear that he saw Wufei give a sigh of relief. But that was impossible, wasn't it?


	7. Chapter 7

Consider this more an interlude than anything. Sorry it's so short, but I really don't want to mess with the chapter breaks I have in place, and obviously, when I was writing this... I wrote really short chapters ^_^. For those that have seen it, yes, I did borrow a character from Yuu Yuu Hakuusho, and she is used without permission, just like the Gundam Pilots.

Part 7 of ?

Shinigami stood in the middle of the vandalized room and let his senses expand around him. The first thing he felt was the taint of another immortal. Unfortunately, whoever it was was masking their signature. There was the faintest hint of familiarity, but not enough for the angry god to figure out who it was.

The god of death was furious. Duo Maxwell was his! True, he hadn't yet claimed him officially, but that didn't change the fact that the boy was his high priest if nothing else. Another god was supposed to ask for his permission to court the mortal. Permission which, of course, he wouldn't give.

The feeling of evil that Duo and Quatre had felt with the second watcher was obvious in the room as well. Unfortunately that didn't help all that much. The whole 'gods are good and demons are evil' myth was just that, a myth. Gods were gods and demons were demons and good and evil had nothing to do with it. In fact, more than half of the gods under him in the House of Death would be considered evil by human standards, as would most of the gods in the House of War, even some in the House of Nature. By most standards, humans would consider him, as well as the Gundam pilots, evil. Simply because of their jobs and duties.

Shinigami shook his head. This wasn't getting him anywhere. He needed information, and he wasn't going to be able to get it here. He sent his senses out to check for danger to his special priest and didn't find any. He, all of them in fact, would be fine for a little while as he checked in at home.

Shinigami spared a thought for the situation between Duo and Wufei. Something was going to have to be done before it went any farther. Unfortunately, the stupid rules set up by Kami-sama made it almost impossible to do what he wanted to do. He couldn't just go in and take what was his, couldn't even show himself to the one he loved, not yet. Soon though. All the requirements except one were in

place. He just needed to keep Wufei and Duo from each other for a short while. Maybe if he put Wufei in the hospital...

Oh well, he'd think about it later.

Shinigami ghosted outside, unsurprised to find a large white mare waiting for him. With no more than a pat to her flank, he swung up onto her saddle. It took no time at all to reach the temple that was his home and the main headquarters of the House of Death. He headed to the control room, absently responding to the greetings from the various beings around him.

He didn't bother stopping in at his office, he didn't want to know how much paperwork was probably waiting for him. His assistants knew how to get in touch with him if there was a true emergency, but there was a ton of things that weren't that important but he was still supposed to take care of himself. He couldn't wait for the next century to be over, until it was finally time for someone else to take over as the Head of the House and he could go back to his own job.

"Shinigami-sama! You're back!" Hinageshi smiled, looking up from the computer screen in front of her.

Shinigami shook his head. "I just came to check on some information."

Without hesitation, the ferrygirl got up and gave her seat to the god. She hadn't been working on anything important, after all.

"Arigotou, Hinageshi-san," Shinigami sat down and started working. First he checked the dates of death for his favored mortals. He let out a breath in relief. Not that he would hesitate to change the date if he wasn't happy with it, but thankfully it didn't seem to be necessary. He hadn't bothered to check before, being interested only in the one pilot, but now they all had a place in his heart.

Hinageshi watched the emotions flashing across the face before her. Until Shinigami took over as Head of House almost four centuries before, she hadn't had much to do with the solemn god, their jobs simply didn't intersect that much since the consolidation of the world's gods millennia before. His duty suited his personality, but made him a very cold, stoic and lonely god. It was nice to see him actually interested in someone. And the lengths he was going to! If it hadn't been for Kami-sama's decree, she was sure the young mortal that had taken his fancy would already be firmly ensconced as Death's consort. She smirked behind her hand. Maybe it would make the god less of a stick-in-the-mud.

Shinigami searched the databanks, looking for the locations of the gods in both the House of Death and the House of War. The other three Houses were not likely to be interested in the Gundam pilot. Even after discarding all of the gods that wouldn't be interested, such as the god of Peaceful Death in his own house, and the ones such as the god of Mischief that had unbreakable alibis, it still left almost a dozen possibilities. Two more he discarded because he knew that blood soaked flowers weren't their courting style.

He was about to go search out the first person on his list when a warning went off in the back of his mind. He needed to get back to his priest, something was going on. He turned to the red haired girl behind him. He handed her the list. "Put a watch on these if possible. At least the ones in our House. Let me know immediately if any of them go near my priest."

"Hai, Shinigami-sam..." He was gone before she even finished the word. She shook her head in exasperation, but there was a smile on her face. She truly couldn't wait to meet this priest of his. He must be something to engender this degree of obsession with the normally unflappable god. She set out to do as she was asked. After all, this boy might be good for the god, but she was sure he wouldn't change him enough that she shouldn't be worried if she failed in her duty.

Shinigami ran through the temple, not noticing the wide-eyed stares following him. He needed to get back to his mortal. Now.


	8. Chapter 8

I've loved the comments I've gotten for this story, but haven't dared to respond... because most of the time I just want to laugh evilly ^_^.

Part 8 of ?

Duo ducked his head as he sprinted towards the jeep, trying to keep up with the Perfect Soldier ahead of him. Without wasting a second, he swung himself into the driver's side, letting Heero take the gunner's position. Slamming the jeep into gear, the tires practically squealed as he tore out of the driveway. His mind was working like a well-oiled machine as he calculated the route most likely to get him and his partner out of the trap the safe house had become.

However, even as he set Heero up for a shot at an incoming truck while keeping out of the range of an OZ soldier with a grenade launcher, his eyes searched desperately for a glimpse of white and black. Quatre and Trowa were already on their way out in a low slung sportscar he had stolen several towns away, but Wufei was nowhere to be seen. Duo swung the jeep in besides the sportscar, it might be fast, but it was far more delicate than he was happy with considering it was carrying two of his friends through a battlefield.

"Where's Wufei?" he shouted over to the banged pilot. Trowa shrugged. He was hanging out the side window, his gun trained on the soldiers in front of them. He looked backwards towards the sound of an engine that was heading straight at them and a smile of relief actually crossed his face for a second.

"Duo!" he yelled. Once sure he had the braided one's attention he pointed backwards.

Duo took a quick glance in the rearview mirror. If he had dared, he would have stopped the jeep and run over to hug the Chinese youth, heading towards them on a deadly looking black motorcycle.

With the five of them together, they had enough fire power to blast their way out of the trap they were in. Once they were well past the last sentries, they split up. All of them knew the plan and headed in different directions to ditch the now traceable cars and get new transportation to reach the back up safehouse.

"Love ya', Fei-chan!" Duo yelled as they split up.

"Be careful, Maxwell!" was Wufei's response as he roared out of sight.

Duo pouted. He had expected more than that from his boyfriend. Then again, this was Wufei. It had been hard enough getting him to say something in private, to expect more when there were others around was silly.

Duo sent the four-wheel drive vehicle off road, planning on cutting over to a parallel road. He watched the motorcycle for as long as possible in his rearview mirror before sighing sadly. His normal carefree smile was still absent from his face as he turned to his companion.

"How do you think they found us?" he asked solemnly.

Heero just looked at him.

"You think it has to do with..." Duo let his voice trail off.

Heero nodded sharply. "No one else knew we were there."

"But that doesn't make sense!" Duo complained. "I mean, why would he go to all the trouble to do that to my room, only to try to have me killed a couple of hours later?"

Heero shrugged. Then his eyes widened slightly as a logical reason came to him. Before he could say anything, Duo slammed on the brakes and stared at him in horror. Obviously they had come to the same conclusion.

"He wanted to separate us. But that means he had to know us well enough to know we'd split up if the safe house was compromised." He threw a hunted glance over his shoulder.

"There's been no indication that anyone is following us," Heero reminded him.

"Excuse me? This guy has never shown up on infrared or visuals, got into our house without setting off any alarms... the fact that we can't see him following us is *not* extremely reassuring!" Duo's voice was almost a shout.

Heero looked at his partner in well-hidden consternation. He had spent many days in the talkative pilot's presence at myriad boarding schools and safe houses. He had noticed that Duo had what was probably the best mask of them all. Unlike his own, Duo's mask was hard to see, because it did show emotion, either cheerfulness and mischievousness, boredom or annoyance. But never had true fear, worry or anger been allowed to show in the presence of other people. To see it so obvious now was a measure of how truly rattled the American was.

"Get out," Heero said gruffly.

"Nani?" Duo was shocked. That wasn't quite the answer he was looking for. "What, you just gonna leave me here by the side of the road and let him get me?"

"Baka," Heero shook his head in annoyance. "You're obviously in no mental condition to drive, and we need to move, not stay parked in the middle of nowhere."

"I can drive," Duo said defensively.

Heero glared at him until he got out of the car and walked around the passenger's side. By the time he was in his new seat, Heero had the car started and was ready to move.

Duo sulked silently beside him.

"Stop the car!" Duo suddenly screamed.

Heero slammed on the brakes. His gun was in his hand in a nano-second as he searched for the danger his passenger had seen. Nothing was there. He turned to glare at the other pilot and stopped, arrested by the look of horrified realization on his face.

"Oh my god, oh my god!" Duo muttered. "What if it's not me? I mean this guy, he can get into the house without being seen, what if he was in the yard? What if he saw me and Fei-chan? If he's like, courting me or something and he saw me with Wufei... Maybe he's after Wufei, and Fei-chan's all alone!"

Heero shook his head as he started the jeep again. "Chang can take care of himself, Duo."

"But..."

"We will meet in two days, as planned. If... whoever... is after Wufei, you will simply have to trust him to take care of himself until then. Going after him to try to protect him will just draw unneeded attention to both him and us. We will continue with the plan as required." Heero's tone left no room for argument.

Duo understood the reasoning behind Heero's argument, but that didn't mean he had to like it. He settled back into a sulk, hiding his worry behind it.

So convinced was Duo that the stalker would go after Wufei, that what he saw upon waking the next morning was a total shock. The smell was the first thing to impinge upon his consciousness. He rolled out of bed with his gun in his hand and his heart in his throat as the combined scent of blood and roses registered.

Unwillingly he looked at the bed beside him, and sighed in relief. Heero was sleeping peacefully, no sign of blood on him at all. The blood was once more over the bouquet of roses sitting on the dresser across from the bed. There was something else there as well. Stealthily, Duo rose to his feet and checked the rest of the room. Nothing else seemed out of place. Only the roses, and the piece of paper on the dresser next to them.

Carefully, using a knife he pulled from his bag, he opened the paper out. It was a letter, written in something that looked remarkably like dried blood. Duo really didn't want to think about why that

would be.

_ My Love,_

_ Soon we will be together forever. In death, you shall be mine for eternity without end. Your immortal soul bound to mine by bonds of love no one can break. Do not worry my love, it will not be long now. _

_ Love, _

_ Your Beloved Master_

"Beloved master? Yeah, right!" Duo practically shouted.

Heero woke abruptly at the sound, out of bed and holding a gun within seemingly nanoseconds.

Duo ignored him as he continued ranting. "I don't call any man master, you slimy son of a bitch, and I sure as hell ain't gonna start now." He turned to Heero, who was looking at the roses in utter disbelief. "This guy's a Grade A psycho! A totally sick sleazeball! Spend eternity together, binding my immortal soul. I *don't* think so, bub. When I find this jerk, I'm going to show him eternity. Eternal pain that is!" He looked at Heero who was still staring around. "What's your problem?"

"How did he get in without waking me up?" Heero had been trained to wake at the slightest out of the ordinary sound. Duo's snoring never bothered him, but a person passing in the hall would have woken him up while still ten feet away from the door. How did someone manage to get into the room without him noticing! It was totally impossible!

"How did he find us? How did he know which room was ours? We'll just have to beat the answers out of him when we find him. I'll do it gladly," Duo's smile was extremely bloodthirsty. Duo was extremely pissed at whoever this slimeball was, but still, if he was here doing this, he must not have gone after Wufei as he'd been dreading.

He grabbed up his things and slammed out of the room, Heero following quickly behind. Duo let out a yell of rage as they reached the sedan he had stolen the day before. He reached in and grabbed the single blood soaked rose that rested on the dashboard of the car. "Look at this! Can you believe this jerk? (%*(&*$! The ^&%$&$ thing bit me!" He threw the rose on the ground and stomped on it before sticking his thumb in his mouth to take away the sting and heading off to find another car. There was no way he was going to drive that one anymore. Who knew what that sicko had done in there?

Heero followed along silently. He was almost as angry as the other boy was, but the last thing they needed was for both of them to explode. Duo was doing quite well on his own.

The next day Heero wasn't angry, he was worried. Duo was feverish and raving, his hand swollen to twice its normal size. Obviously that rose he had pricked himself on had been poisoned. Heero had considered stopping at a hospital, but Quatre's estate was close by, and his doctors were not only capable but also trustworthy.

He pulled up in front of the mansion and stopped quickly. Quatre came out to welcome them, smiling warmly. The smile fell from his face as he watched Heero open the door and pick up Duo. "Duo!" he cried out, rushing forward. "What's wrong with him?"

"He's been poisoned," Heero said shortly, striding toward the house. "That stalker found us yesterday morning and left one of his 'gifts'. He's been feverish for the last four hours."

"Wufei! Wufei!" Duo called out, thrashing around in Heero's arms.

"He's also been calling out for Wufei since it started. I don't suppose..."

Quatre shook his head. "He's not here yet, we only got here a couple of hours ago ourselves." He led the way through the house as he talked. Luckily the infirmary here was well stocked and the doctor was one of the best. Since this house was only to be used in emergencies the chances were high that at least one of the people who came would be hurt.

Three hours later, the doctor came to talk to the four worried pilots. Wufei had arrived only an hour before and was chomping at the bit to be able to see his boyfriend. The doctor did not look happy.

"Doctor? How's Duo?" Quatre asked worriedly.

The doctor looked into the concerned blue eyes of his young master and sighed. "I'm sorry," he said quietly.

"What do you mean, sorry?" Wufei practically shouted.

"I mean, that there is nothing we can do. The poison is unknown to our computers, and it's spreading fast. That young Duo has lasted this long is nothing short of a miracle and is due entirely to his

own strong will. Still, he's not expected to live for more than a couple more hours."

"He's not going to die," Wufei growled.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Chang, but there is nothing more we can do."

Wufei pushed past the doctor and headed towards the patient's room. The others hurried after him. Quatre had tears streaming down his face and the two silent pilots had shell-shocked looks on their faces. The fact that one of them could die was something they'd lived with since the start of the war, but they'd expected it to be in battle. Not because of something like this!

They reached the room to see Wufei sitting next to the bed, holding Duo's hand in a death grip. "You're not going to die, you hear me love? I'm not going to let you."

"Fei-chan?" Duo murmured weakly. "You love me?"

"Yes, baka, I love you!" Wufei said emphatically. "Now, hurry and get well so I can show you, okay?"

"I'll try," Duo tried to smile. "But it hurts, Fei. Can't you make it stop hurting? Please, Fei-chan."

The doctor spoke from behind them. "The poison is eating through him from the inside out, almost like an acid. It won't be long now."

Quatre stepped forward, trying to be brave when he suddenly gasped and grabbed at his heart.

"What is it, Quatre?" Trowa asked, pulling him close.

Quatre stared at a spot over Duo's bed. He was the only one who could see the dark apparition that was reaching out a bony hand towards Duo's body.

"Death," he whispered.

TBC...

AN: :laughs evilly:


	9. Chapter 9

More evil laughter...

Part 9 of ?

Quatre wanted desperately to look away. He didn't want this to be his last memories of one of his best friends. He knew if he watched Death take the braided pilot, he would see it in nightmares for the rest of his life. But the apparition held his gaze like a cobra's hypnotizing stare.

Therefore, he was the only one to see as Death reached towards the comatose boy. He watched in horror as the bony white hand stretched to ryve the life from the youth and the laughter from a group of far too solemn pilots. His mouth dropped open in total disbelief as the hand stopped.

Under the hood, Death's face was a rictus of shock. Less than half an inch from the boy's flesh a bronze hand had flashed out and grabbed his, stopping him in his tracks.

"You dare, mortal?" the spectre's voice seemed to be both a whisper and a shout, heard by both the ears and the minds of everyone in the room as he became visible. Heero had his gun in his hand in half a breath, but even he doubted it would do any good with this foe.

"Yes, I do," Wufei said calmly, not even looking back at the person he was talking to. "He's not going to die, so just get away from him."

The god of Death growled and yanked his hand away. He still wasn't sure how the boy had managed to grab him, his touch itself was Death. But he wasn't going to waste anymore time with this mortal who had dared lay a hand on him. Both of the mortals would die.

His scythe was in his hands as he launched a blow at the black haired youth who had tried to stop him, but didn't even deign to look at him. Once more he found himself shocked as the boy ducked under the swing, and caught the pole of the weapon before it could move against the other body in the bed.

"What part of 'He's not going to die', do you not understand?" he growled. Finally he lifted his gaze away from his love and turned to look at the apparition behind him. Dimly he heard his teammates gasp and knew his eyes must be blazing with anger. "This is none of your business and none of your concern. Leave, Thanatos."

"Sh-Shi-Shinigami-sama?"

Wufei spared a glance around and almost smiled. The other three pilots looked as if they were in shock and about to faint. All of the Perfect Soldier's vaunted stoicism and the banged pilot's silent passiveness were blown away by this revelation. His eyes turned back to the god in front of him and all traces of amusement were gone from his face. He raised an eyebrow as he glared. "Are you stil lhere?"

Thanatos drew himself up. "My lord, you can't just cancel a duly fated death."

Wufei glided to his feet like a panther rising to hunt. "Can... I... not?" his voice was quiet but there was a power and command within it, like nothing the other pilots had heard before. It seethed with menace, while still cloaked with a veneer of civility. A voice that warned that there were far worse things than death and he was intimate with them all and wished to pass that knowledge on. All this in three words. Heero, the master of short and to the point, was very impressed.

So was Thanatos, if the way his skin changed was any indication. The bone white couldn't get any paler, but his complexion sallowed and turned almost yellow. He backed away, and disappeared without another word.

Wufei sighed and the tension drained from his body as he turned to his beloved priest, laying so silently on the bed. How could Duo's day of death be changed without his consent? This needed looking into immediately. He also needed to see one of the healer gods about an antidote to the poison Duo had been given. He brushed his lips over the forehead of the other boy, ensuring him a gentle sleep, then stood and turned to the others in the room. Looking at their expressions, he closed his eyes. How, exactly, was he supposed to explain this? Maybe he could put it off for a while?

"He's sleeping peacefully right now, could you watch him until I get back?" he asked, moving quickly to get out of the room before they could gather their wits.

"Hold it!" Heero ordered.

/_Knew it was too good to last,_/ Wufei sighed to himself even as he turned to look at the other pilot. "Yes, Yuy?"

"Where's Wufei?" he asked shortly, his gun rising.

"I'm right here, Yuy."

"I meant the real one, Shinigami. If that's who you really are," Heero's voice was hard.

Wufei shook his head. "There has never been another, Heero. I'm the same person I've been since the beginning of this war, the same one who has fought beside you for the last year."

"Why?" Quatre asked softly.

Shinigami knew what he was asking and turned once more to the boy on the bed. He smiled slightly before looking back at the blonde. "He has loved Death most of his life, is it truly any surprise that Death loves him back?"

"Why didn't you tell him before now?" Quatre asked.

"You mean that I was Shinigami?"

Quatre shook his head. "I mean that you loved him."

"It would not have been just," Wufei answered simply. Quatre smiled at such a Wufei-like statement. "He can not truly love me until he knows all of me, and saying anything before then would have raised his hopes too high." /_/And dropped him too far if he had decided he couldn't handle it._/ He carefully did not think about what it would do to him if he said it and then found Duo could not love all of him. "And I wasn't allowed to tell him who I was without Kami-sama's consent."

"I still want to know about Chang Wufei," Heero didn't let the conversation distract him.

"What do you want to know Heero Yuy?" Wufei turned to look at him in exasperation. "Chang Wufei is me. The original fifth pilot was supposed to be a girl, Meiran. She died before Operation Meteor took place. I simply put myself in a place where I would be found as a replacement pilot. I needed to get to know Duo and I felt this was the most efficient way to do so."

"So this whole war didn't mean anything to you?" Trowa broke his silence to ask.

"Not at first, no," Wufei agreed easily. "It was just more work. The only good thing about war was that it concentrated the deaths in one place so the collectors didn't have to go looking for the dead. However, once I started knowing not only Duo, but all of you and the others, such as Sally Po even Relena, it became more personal. Not just a matter of Justice and Death."

"That's another thing." Heero didn't seem any happier. "If you are the god of Death, who was that other?"

"Thanatos is the god of Painful Death."

"And you are?"

"I know, I know! You're Justice, aren't you?" Quatre grinned.

A small breaking voice came with a laugh from the patient on the hospital bed. "Death is, after all, the final Justice."


	10. Chapter 10

Expected a comment or two after the last one. Ah well, hope this explains.

Part 10 of ?

"Duo?" Wufei's head whipped around at the painful whisper behind him. He hurried back to Duo's bedside and took his hand in his. He expected Duo to pull his hand away in dismay, not hold tight and pull him to sit on the edge of the bed.

"Al.. always did love Death," Duo whispered, a hint of his usual grin on his pain wracked features.

Wufei smiled for him, using his free hand to push the sweat soaked bangs off the other pilot's brow. "That's one of the things that drew me to you, my priest. You loved Death with the same fervor you loved Life, but only needful Death, only honorable Death."

"P... priest?"

"You dedicated your life to me, in a way I could accept, and were the first to do so in years beyond counting. Your kills were always of the guilty, or those who served them, not indiscriminate slaughter. Since you dedicated yourself to me when you were six, through blood, pain and tears, every death you dealt after that has been a sacrifice to me. Every time you called yourself Shinigami, and made others believe, you spread my worship. That makes you, not only a priest, but also my high priest. You intrigued me, in a way no others have done, ever. I wanted to get to know you.

"So I became a pilot. And to my surprise, I found that there were things on the mortal plane that I hadn't dreamed of in millennia." Wufei stopped for a moment. More than anything, he wished to go find the antidote and cure the braided pilot. But he couldn't. He knew how important it was to Duo that he say all of this. That *this* point in time would be when he won or lost the mortal for all eternity. He also knew that the pain his beloved was in was interfering with his concentration upon the words. Shinigami drew his power into himself. He couldn't heal, it wasn't in his nature, but he could strengthen his priest, push the pain into the background so it didn't interfere so much, and slow down the spread of the poison.

The other pilots were standing at the side of the room just watching. In truth, they didn't know what to do with the revelations that had come today. One thing they did know, they were not going to interrupt the outpouring that was going on across the room.

Quatre gasped softly. Trowa and Heero turned to him quickly, faces questioning. The Arabian pilot was staring towards the Chinese boy on the bed. "How could I have missed that?" he whispered, awestruck. "The pure power in him."

"Evil?" Heero bit out.

Quatre shook his head slowly. "No evil, just power beyond anything I've ever seen."

Duo sighed as the pain seemed to fade from his consciousness. The violet eyes he turned towards Wufei were clear and sharp. "Go on," he ordered.

Wufei nodded and seemed to look out into the distance. "It seemed as if I had finally found a place to do some good," he started. "As Quatre said, my job is Justice. I judge the souls and send them on to the reward or punishment they deserved by their actions in life. But lately it had all seemed so worthless. Do you know what the number one emotion I see in the people brought before me now is?" He doesn't wait for an answer. "Surprise! Disbelief! Incomprehension! Most of them don't even really believe that they're going to get judged!" He surged off the bed and started pacing. "They think that now that their life is over, nothing they did during it has any relevance on their afterlife! It used to be that part of the reason for punishment was to deter others from doing the same thing. To make people think about their actions and decide against the ones that would hurt others! It used to be I could look at people's souls and say, this one would have become bad, but he feared for his immortal soul and chose rightly. Now it's all, 'hey, if the humans didn't punish me for it, what right do you have?' Or even worse, 'I'm powerful, rich and in charge, nothing I do is wrong.'" He turned to stare at the boy in the bed. "Where is the Justice in that?" His voice got softer. "Where is the *good* in that?"

"Here on Earth, it's different. The Justice Nataku and I give is real, immediate. It makes people think. It saves lives. It is Justice, not just for the dead, but for the living as well."

"I can no longer think, 'now those he tormented can have some peace, because they know he's getting what he deserves in Hell'. People no longer say, 'she's gone to her eternal reward.' The only ones nowadays who believe in Justice beyond Death are those living it."

"You mean afterliving it," Duo chuckled.

Wufei glared.

Duo "eeped" and muttered "sorry" but the twinkle in his eyes belied his sincerity.

Wufei shook his head in exasperation while holding back a smile by force of will. "Then along came you. A boy, a *mortal*, when I had given up on mortals. You called, and I was compelled to listen, you worshiped and I watched. You sent sacrifices to me, and for the first time in a very long while, I took an interest in their judgment. Whether it was conscious or not, you truly believed that those you sent to me would get the justice they deserved, and I could not let you down."

"I came to Earth when you joined the war. At first, my main interest was in keeping you alive until I could come to you and claim you as my consort. But the longer I was here, the more I realized that this war was worth fighting, that this was an injustice worth being stopped. It became my war, as well as yours. I buried Shinigami deep within Wufei Chang, so no other gods knew I was involved and so that Quatre didn't notice that I wasn't all that I seemed. But I couldn't stop myself from watching you, not only out of worry for you, but because I enjoyed watching you do what you loved to do."

Wufei finally ran out of words and settled down on the foot of Duo's bed. Duo just looked at him solemnly for a long moment.

"I didn't hear anything about love in there," was all he finally said.

Wufei winced. "At first there wasn't any. When I came down it was because I was intrigued... curious... because you were mine. My worshiper, my priest... *mine*." He looked away for a moment. When he looked back his eyes were intent, focused. His dark eyes caught Duo's violet ones and held them. "Then I got to know you. You were so much more than the parts I had seen before. You were a child when I first saw you, now you were a man, no matter your age. A beautiful, courageous, complicated, strong, wise, happy, puzzling and extremely sexy man. I was falling in love, but I don't think I even realized what it was until I realized that I was jealous of Quatre."

"Quatre?" Duo said in disbelief.

"Quatre?" Trowa echoed.

"Me?" Quatre's voice was just as confused as the others were.

Wufei blushed slightly. "Yes, Quatre. I knew you weren't involved with him, but..."

"But?" Duo prompted.

"But he could get *real* smiles out of you, true smiles you didn't give anyone else, especially me. You were always with him when you had a choice and you trusted him and talked with him. I was lucky if I got a 'good morning.'"

"You weren't exactly the easiest person to get to know yourself," Duo shot back. "It seemed like every time I did try to talk to you, you shot me down. Either started ranting, or got as silent as the stoic twins over there!"

"Well, I'm sorry, but it's not as if Heaven's full of great conversationalists! I'm usually so busy that the only people I ever get to talk to are the people I'm passing sentence on or my secretary. I'm not used to dealing with mortals! And I got better didn't I?"

Duo sighed, and settled back down with a small smile on his face. "Yes, you did. Except for the telling me you're in love with me part."

"I couldn't do that without telling you I was Shinigami, and I wasn't supposed to do that until you were of the age of consent, which is still over a month away. I pushed the rules enough by kissing you." He looked away, embarrassed. "That's why you suddenly got tired that time. I didn't think I'd have enough self control to back away by myself, but Kami-sama's way big on being of age, and he'd have fried me if we'd gone much further before you turn sixteen."

"You think he'd mind?" Duo said with a leer. "Seeing as I'm not going to turn sixteen?"

Wufei shot from the bed and glared down at his boyfriend. He couldn't believe he'd almost forgotten what had started this in the first place. "Don't talk like that! I already told you you're not going to die. You're going to lay right here, go to sleep, and they," he tossed his head to indicate the other three pilots still against the wall, "are going to watch over you while I go find someone who has an antidote." He bent down and kissed the other boy deeply, before nudging him gently to sleep.

"Take care of him," he ordered, before turning and sweeping out of the room.


	11. Chapter 11

Figured I should put a disclaimer here since I borrowed another character from another show. Neither the Gundam Pilots nor the ferry girl, Hinageshi belong to me. They belong to the authors/production companies of Gundam Wing and Yuu Yuu Hakusho respectively.

I could tell from a couple of the reviews that a few people were confused. Shinigami is Wufei Chang. Wufei did not exist until Shinigami decided to become a Gundam Pilot after Meiran's death. Shinigami has not possessed Wufei, he *_is_* Wufei. Any flashbacks or past memories were kind of retrograded into place when Wufei decided to join the war. Shenlong was only used as a template for Nataku. Hope that helps!

Part 11 of ?

Shinigami strode out of the house as quickly as he could without looking undignified. He should have been at the business of saving his love's life an hour ago, but he couldn't help but feel the past conversation had been the right thing to do. Still, there were things he had to do now. Starting with getting help for Duo, ending with taking care of whomever dared to touch him.

Shinigami opened the door and looked at the motorcycle he had ridden in on. "Nataku." One word was all that was required as the outlines of the black bike shimmered. In seconds, standing where the bike had been was a large white mare. She shook her hair-covered hide to settle her saddle and tossed her head, looking at her master with a twinkle in her eye. She had enjoyed the last year immensely. Before this time spent on Earth, she had mostly used only two shapes, the white mare, or a large black dragon. It was much more difficult, but a lot of fun, to be something mechanical such as a motorcycle... or a Gundam.

Besides, she liked her Master's chosen mate. He was a lot of fun too.

Well... except for the time he had painted her pink with fluorescent green spots... She still shuddered in remembrance of *that* escapade.

She looked at her Master in concern. That expression did not bode well for whoever had made him so angry. Nope, it did not bode well at all.

Wufei swung himself into the saddle. Nataku required no directions as she phased herself and her rider away from the mortal realm, to the home of the Gods.

Minor gods and other beings hurriedly moved out of the way of the almost running god of Death. The expression on his face was easily readable, 'Don't get in my way.'

"Shinigami-sama!" Hinageshi jumped to her feet happily, only to pull up short as she got a good look. "Is something wrong, Shinigami-sama?"

"Did you manage to keep track of those gods I asked you to?" Shinigami asked, even as his hands danced across the computer terminal she had been sitting at.

"Hai." The ferrygirl pulled up the notes she had gathered. "As far as we have been able to determine, the only one to go near your priest is"

"Thanatos," Shinigami hissed. He was staring at the date of Duo's death. It was the same as it had been the last three times he'd checked. There was no other reasonable explanation for the God of Painful Death to have come for the mortal when it was not his time to die.

"That's correct," Hinageshi told him, seemingly not at all perturbed by the interruption.

Shinigami pulled up a picture of his priest's sickroom. "Is there anything in Thanatos' file that might give a hint what poison was used... What the hell!"

The red-haired ferrygirl looked up quickly at the growled words. It was extremely unusual that the God of Death's Justice would ever curse, even as mildly as that. Looking at the picture, it didn't take a genius to figure out what was wrong. Hovering over the bed of the weakened pilot was a black clothed figure. They watched as the Arabian pilot became aware of his presence.

"Thanatos," Quatre said softly, but with steel in his voice. "I believe Shinigami-sama asked you to leave."

Thanatos turned to look at the young blond. Slowly he grinned, a very macabre vision, on his bone white face. "But Shinigami's not here, is he? And do *you* believe you can stop me?" he hissed.

Quatre strode forward. "I can certainly try," he answered back steadily. The other pilots couldn't see what the youth was talking to, but that didn't stop Heero from having his gun pointing at the apparition.

Thanatos turned away from the boys who were truly no threat at all and looked at the one he was hovering over. Out of one sleeve, he pulled a blood soaked rose.

"You!" Quatre almost shouted. His face was a mask of anger as he watched the god brush the rose over Duo's lips. The other pilots saw only the sudden presence of blood trailing over the still sleeping boy's lips and down to his neck. With one accord they all raced towards the bed, determined to do anything they could to save their friend.

"Is there any way we can talk to them?" Shinigami asked worriedly. He knew that there was, but it had been so long since he'd had to use the equipment, that he wasn't quite sure how to do it.

Hinageshi nodded silently as she pressed some buttons. "Go ahead," she whispered.

"Quatre, Heero, Trowa! Back off! If you touch him, you'll die!" Reluctantly, the pilots stepped back from the bed.

"Thanatos," Wufei's voice was hard, low and dangerous, but the fact that he wasn't physically there seemed to give the other god courage.

"Shinigami," Thanatos snarled back. "Why did you have to get involved? This has nothing to do with you. Go back to your precious scrolls and judgments." He practically sneered. "He's mine! The bloodsnake venom makes him mine, and no one would have even noticed he was gone until his true death date. What are you going to do? Go crying to Kami-sama?" The sneer was still on his face as he dropped the rose and reached his hand out towards the sleeping boy. He, as well as everyone watching, knew there was no way that Shinigami could get there in time to save his priest.

Hinageshi covered her eyes in despair. This was not how it was supposed to go. And even if Shinigami-sama did get his revenge, it wouldn't get him his consort back from the realm of the dead. So she didn't see the god of Death reach out and open the box surrounding the one button that had never been pushed. And push it. The first she knew of it, was when the alarm went off throughout the entire complex.

First her eyes flew up to the screen to where Thanatos had laid his hand on Maxwell's face. Thanatos' face was a mask of disbelief as the young pilot went on breathing. Then her eyes tracked towards her boss, who was staring upwards with an intent expression on his face, and his hands... on the button.

"Shinigami-sama? What did you do?" she practically screamed.

"I will not let Duo die," he answered calmly.

"But... but... to stop Death all over the world for one boy? Do you know what you've done?" she screeched.

The god turned to look at her. "Of course." He turned back to the screen and swore. Hinageshi went to answer the ringing phone even as she looked to see what else could go wrong. The bed was empty and the god of Painful Death was nowhere to be seen. Obviously, Thanatos had decided that if he couldn't have Duo's soul, he'd make do with the body.

"Hello?" Hinageshi answered the phone and her eyes went wide. She turned to her boss who was already heading out of the room at a fast clip. "Shinigami-sama! The phone! It's Kami-sama! He wants to talk to you!"

His answer floated back as he went through the door. "Take a message!"

Hinageshi blinked in disbelief, stared at the phone in her hand, and gulped.


	12. Chapter 12

Heading towards the end. Only a couple more chapters and an epilogue to go.

Part 12 of 15?

Shinigami ran to Nataku. Grimly he pushed aside all thoughts of what he had done and what the consequences would probably be. With one move he had saved his love's life, but more than likely destroyed his own. Kami-sama was not going to take his actions lightly, and the punishment would probably be severe. However, as long as he knew Duo was safe, he could and would deal with the results of his actions. *After* Duo was safe.

The first priority was to get an antidote to the poison eating away at his priest. Luckily, Thanatos himself had given him the answer to that one. Without the name of the poison, the God of Death would have had to go to a major Healing God, describe the symptoms, then wait around while they figured out what it might be and how to counteract it. Not to mention all the kowtowing and bargaining he would have had to do. With the information given to him he was able to ask a minor god who owed him a favor to get the antidote. There was also a smaller chance of Kami-sama being able to get hold of him in the time he spent at the Healing temple.

The next question was whether the other pilots should go with him. His first thought was no, it was too dangerous for mortals. Then he reconsidered. There was no doubt in his mind that he could take Thanatos; finding him might be more of a problem. He couldn't use any of his major powers without advertising his location and Thanatos would have his place blocked against anything less. He also wasn't exactly sure where Thanatos' home was and without access to the computer system...

Shinigami made up his mind quickly. It took a very frustrating couple of hours to gather everything he thought he would need. Somehow or other, he had never considered that he'd have to use his infiltration skills as a Gundam pilot in Heaven.

Finally he was as ready as he could get. Nataku took him back to Earth. Taking a deep breath, Wufei Chang walked into the safe house.

"Wufei!" Quatre called out as soon as he saw him. "What's going on? Where's Duo? What's happening with Death? The world's going crazy! Nobody's dying, so a lot of people are just trying to kill each other and you've got people just hanging around with these awful wounds!" He shuddered.

The other two pilots had come running at Quatre's call of the fifth pilot's name. "Where's Duo?" asked Heero as soon as Quatre stopped to take a breath.

"I'm not sure," Wufei admitted. "I need your help."

"You have it," Trowa answered immediately.

Wufei glanced around and got a nod from Heero and an "Of course," from Quatre. Bending down, he opened the bag he brought in with him. The first thing he pulled out was a laptop. He handed it to Heero. "This has an Ethernet connection to our main computer system, unfortunately my password isn't working right now. All we need is coordinates to Thanatos' home. Think you can do it?"

Heero took the laptop. "Mission accepted."

"If you have trouble, look for a guy in cyberspace who calls himself the CyberLord. He's a techno god with a real soft spot for hackers. He'll probably help, simply because no mortal has ever hacked Heaven's system." Heero nodded absently, already deep in his work.

Wufei turned to look at Quatre. "Once we get there I might be able to help you focus your space heart to actually find Duo. The problem is that Thanatos is a god of both pain and death and he enjoys them both immensely. It's not going to be a nice place for an empath."

Quatre's gaze was steady. "I'll do what is necessary to save Duo."

Wufei smiled slightly. He had expected nothing less. He bent down to the bag again. He pulled out three guns.

"I know you'd prefer your own weapons, but the minions Thanatos has are already dead, so normal guns won't work on them. The bullets in these should work on anything that isn't a god or major demon." He handed them out.

"Once we get to Duo, I'll take care of Thanatos. Heero, Quatre, you two will run interference for both Trowa and me. I can take Thanatos, but I'd prefer to do it without being distracted by others."

"And me?" Trowa asked.

In answer, Wufei very gently pulled out a vial from inside his jacket. He handed it to Trowa, who took it just as gently. "Once we get there, I need you to get this to Duo. It's the antidote for the poison." He pulled out another vial with a slightly glowing golden liquid inside and handed that over as well. "That's a healing draught. It should heal the damage the poison left. But you've got to give him the antidote first. The healing draught would heal the damage, but without the antidote, the poison would still be in his system and would start doing damage again."

Trowa nodded his understanding and carefully put away the vials.

Quatre and Trowa settled down on the couch as Wufei started pacing. They all knew there was nothing they could do until Heero managed to get them a location for their mission objective. The idea that Heero might fail was quickly shoved away.

"Will you answer some questions?" Quatre asked the pacing god softly.

Wufei turned to look at him. "Ask," he replied shortly.

"What happened to Death?" the blond asked, repeating one of the questions that had been pushed aside earlier.

Wufei sank into a chair and sighed. "I stopped it." He looked up at the other pilots. "I knew there was no way I could stop Thanatos from where I was, so I stopped Death. All of it."

"And Kami-sama let you?"

Wufei shrugged. "I didn't exactly ask for permission. I know he's not exactly happy about it though. Why do you think I can't use any of my major powers or even my password?"

"But... he's Kami-sama," somehow Quatre managed to imply with that statement that Kami-sama was supposed to be all knowing.

"He is," Wufei answered gently. "But he's also the All Father. He understands what I'm doing, and as long as I don't do something that the other high hierarchy gods can track, he'll let me finish what I started. As long as it doesn't take too long. He's got to worry about the humans as well, you know."

"So you're not really in trouble?" Quatre asked hopefully.

"I'm very much in trouble," Wufei answered sadly. "Regardless of why I did it, what I did was forbidden. Mortals are suffering because of my actions. Once we find Duo, I'm going to have to return to Heaven."

Looking into his eyes, Quatre didn't even need his space heart to read the ancient pain looking back at him. He gasped in sympathy and understanding. "You... you won't be coming back from that will you? But... but what about Duo?"

Wufei sighed, noticing the others were looking at him sharply. Even Heero had raised his head from the laptop. "Only Kami-sama knows."

Silence hung over the room for a long moment. Finally Trowa broke it. "Are you going to kill Thanatos?"

Wufei looked up from his contemplation. "Hmm? No, unfortunately it's forbidden to kill a god, and that's one law that Kami-sama would not overlook. He will be punished though, once I pass sentence on him, only Kami-sama would be able to break it. I'm just not sure what to do with him yet."

"I've got a few ideas," Heero muttered, proving that he could indeed hear things while on the computer.

"Don't forget, he's a god of pain, painful tortures wouldn't work on him too well, and I'm not allowed to take him from his job either. I need something that would humiliate him as well as torture him. Like having to watch Barney 24 hours a day."

"Make him wear pink," Quatre suggested, giggling. "He'd be a lot less scary that way."

"Make him paint the walls of his castle with cute little scenes," was Trowa's suggestion.

"Make him sing 'I'm a Little Teapot' with the motions whenever he goes to torture someone," Heero threw in.

Everyone turned to stare at him, then shook their heads and went back to what they were doing.

"Ooh, ooh, I know! Use the Ultimate Torture! Give him exactly what he wanted, heal Duo up, make sure Thanatos can't hurt him and leave him there for a week!" Quatre bounced up in his seat, grinning.

"Wouldn't that count as cruel and unusual punishment?" Heero smirked.

"It would be 'Justice'," Trowa suggested with a hint of a grin at using Wufei's pet phrase. "And I have little doubt that he'd be returned the minute Thanatos was allowed to."

Wufei glared at the other pilots, hiding the twinkle in his eyes. "Are you saying there's something wrong with my boyfriend?" he growled. "And Quatre, that's no where near the Ultimate Torture."

Quatre started to pout.

"The Ultimate Torture would be leaving Duo there for a week with an unlimited supply of double espresso and pixie sticks."

Eyes went wide as the other pilots tried to imagine that, and even Heero shuddered in horror. A pissed off Duo on a permanent caffeine and sugar high? Quatre whimpered and snuggled deeper into Trowa's arms.

Into the horrified silence, Heero's words dropped. "I've found him."


	13. Chapter 13

Duo didn't quite like getting kidnapped did he? Not to mention... he really needs a bathroom ^_^.

Part 13 of 15

Thanatos stood staring down at his new plaything, gloating. "I never thought Shinigami-baka would do such a thing, but it looks like he's taken care of *himself*. Kami-sama will never allow him to stop Death for long, and then he's going to be punished..." He grinned. "I wonder who will take over his job once Kami-sama gets through with him? I wonder if I'll be allowed to help punish him? I can think of such wonderful things to do to that justice ranting, moralistic bastard. He'd be even more fun to play with than you, my beautiful one." He reached down and patted Duo's face. "Whoever gets him, one thing's for sure, he'll never be allowed on Earth again." He went away, chuckling.

As the door closed behind him, Duo's eyes opened slightly. He carefully looked around himself through the slits in his eyelids. Seeing nothing threatening, he slowly eased himself up into a sitting position. "This guy needs some serious decorating help," he chuckled to himself. "I mean, I like black and red as much as the next psychotic killer, but this is ridiculous."

The room was faced with a combination of dark stone and ebony wood. The blackness of the walls and floor was only broken by abstract tapestries in shades of red and rugs the color of blood. Even the bed was made of ebony wood with black silk sheets.

Duo took a deep breath and started to gather his composure. If what he understood from his own observations and what Thanatos had said was true, then he wasn't going to die. Not yet anyway. Therefore the poison destroying his body from the inside out wasn't going to kill him immediately. That made it an enemy to be beat; no enemy had beaten him yet, this one wasn't going to either.

Duo concentrated and pushed the pain as far back into his consciousness as he could. Just because he thought Heero was stupid and masochistic for setting his own leg and then walking on it immediately, didn't mean he couldn't do the same thing. After all, he might not be as superhuman as the Perfect Soldier, but he was nowhere *near* ordinary. He was a Gundam Pilot. He was the beloved priest of Shinigami, though that thought really hadn't completely sunk in yet. No little pain was going to stop him from trying to save himself.

With those thoughts firmly in the forefront of his mind, Duo stood up. He wavered slightly as his weakened body wanted to fall back down. He refused to allow it. With pure determination fueling him, he set out to explore the room he had been left in.

Five minutes later he settled back onto the bed. This had to be a guestroom or plushy cell of some sort, because there was absolutely nothing around with which he could make a weapon. Luckily the lock on the door looked as if it would be extremely easy to pick. The problem was, there was no true way to tell if there was someone outside the door or not. He'd tried banging on the door and shouting, but got no response. Of course, all that meant was that if there was someone out there, they weren't responding.

Oh well, what's the worst they could do if there was? They couldn't kill him, that had already been tried. He also didn't see any way they could hurt him worse than the pain of the venom running through his system. Besides, he really needed to use the bathroom.

Duo pulled out the lockpicks he kept in his hair. He knelt down as close to the floor as possible and peeked out through the gap under the door. Not seeing anything, he checked the door for alarms. Only when he was as sure as possible that his escape would be unobserved did he quietly pick the lock.

As the lock clicked open, he waited, leaning his ear against the wood to try to hear any sound from the corridor outside. After five wary minutes, he slowly turned the handle and pushed open the door. A quick look through the opening showed open, dark corridor ahead of him. Slowly he oozed through the door, closing and locking it after him.

Duo spent a moment trying to recall how he'd felt as he'd been carried through the... castle? That's kind of how it looked, all dark and gothic like. He turned right and ghosted silently down the hallway. Several times he stopped to check adjoining rooms. All of them were empty of both people and anything that might be of use. And none of them were bathrooms.

Deathscythe's pilot was starting to wonder about this place. There were no people, there were no guards, and even worse, there were no bathrooms. Did anyone even live here? He turned down several more corridors, still finding nothing. This was not good. He was getting tired and it was getting harder to push away the feeling of lava pulsing through his veins. If he didn't find something soon, his best bet might just be to go into one of those empty rooms and try to hide.

Finally he found something different. A door made of steel, with a computer keypad next to it. "I wonder if they lock up their bathrooms," he muttered with a hint of a tired grin. He looked over the setup carefully. With the proper equipment, he could get through the computer lock in less than thirty seconds. Without that equipment, it would take a bit longer. Maybe too long. Oh well, there was always plan B.

The braided pilot strode up to the door and knocked loudly. When nothing happened, he repeated it, louder and longer. He was about to knock for a last time, when the door swished open.

"Whadda ya want?" the guard growled threateningly.

Duo grinned maniacally. "This!" he chirped before hitting out, aiming unerringly for the spots that would put a person down immediately. It wasn't until the guard was unconscious on the floor that he wondered whether the moves would work on dead people or demons. He shrugged, "I guess they do."

Inside was Nirvana. Well, not quite, there was no bathroom. Still, the computer systems in the room almost made up for that. Duo wandered around, looking over the setup. For the most part it looked as if this was a communications/security room. One monitor on the wall showed what had happened to the people. They were all gathered together in a large ballroom of some sort, having a party.

"Well, no need to bother them just yet when they're all having such a great time," he murmured to himself as he settled down at the communications console. It took him very little time to find a connection to Earth's Internet and start downloading. A long time before he'd found that it made much more sense to have his hacking and annoyance programs situated in different servers around the system, instead of just on disks, a laptop that might have to be wiped at any time, or his own memory. That way, in situations such as this, all he had to do was find a copy of his program, download it and he was ready to go. Then he could just wipe it from the system when he was done, and no one would ever know.

While waiting, he surfed over to one of his favorite sites. He had noticed that the public address system could be used from this console as well and planned on taking full advantage of that fact. After all, what was a party without music? He looked through the options on "The Most Annoying Songs Ever Made" webpage. "Songs that get Stuck in your Head" was a good mix, but he'd used it before. He'd never forget the sight of Heero Yuy singing "Blue (Da Ba Di)", and Trowa had gone around singing the Discovery Channel Song for days. Still, not quite right for a party. Ah! There's what he wanted. The dance mix. He laughed madly to himself as he set it to download.

For the next few minutes he reprogrammed and rewired, then buried all of his changes under other things and other changes. He'd really wanted to have the security system show only the porn channel, or maybe Barney, but unfortunately they didn't seem to get cable here. He had to make do with making sure it couldn't be moved away from the ballroom. The radar would show incoming unidentified objects at random intervals and with no predictable pattern, none of which could be checked by the camera as long as the monitor would show only the ballroom. The general alarm would also go off at random intervals, if that is, it could be heard over the music.

Duo had planned to mailbomb any gods he could find the addresses to, but unfortunately his hands were trembling that much by that time that he couldn't be sure he could even hit send. Still, anything else he did would just be pure mischief, the important things had been done. Now, when his friends came to get him there should be little interference.

Duo stood up and swayed violently. He might have a superhuman will, but his body was at the point of collapse. Concentrating on what he'd had to do had kept away the pain while he was busy, but now it wanted to be acknowledged. He refused to allow it. It took all of his strength but he stood back up. It was not over yet. He could not collapse here. Looking around almost stupidly, he noticed the guard's belongings. There was an almost full bottle of whiskey sitting next to his bag. Duo reached out for it like it was ambrosia. Normally he didn't like to drink, but if it could dull out the pain slightly, or brace him up until he could move? As he raised it to his lips, he suddenly thought of all those stories where a person eats or drinks in Hell and isn't allowed back out. Sure, it might all be myth and stories, but did he really want to take that chance?

He sighed as he moved it away from him. Looking at the guard, he realized there was a better thing he could do with it. Dragging the guard over near his chair, he forced the bottle into the unconscious man's mouth and poured the liquid down his throat, barely taking the time to make sure he didn't choke. Then he splashed some more on the man's uniform, and left the bottle tipped over next to the limp hand.

The young terrorist took a quick look around to make sure he hadn't left any clues. He quickly wiped down any surface that he touched, and got ready to go. His eyes caught on the image of the party on the screen. Everyone was yelling "Speech" and Thanatos was ascending the podium. Forget setting things up on a timer, there would be no better time than this. Duo quickly set up the song he wanted and waited with his hand over the enter button. Thanatos raised his hands and waited for quiet. Not quite yet, not quite yet. The God of Painful Death opened his mouth to speak. Now!

"OY! MACARENA!" poured at full blast out of every speaker and intercom in the entire building.

Quickly hiding the program, Duo ran. He only made it halfway through the first corridor before he had to slow down to a slow walk. The blocks over the pain were almost gone. He filled his mind with thoughts, trying to keep the pain away.

/_Wufei's Shinigami. Man that's so hard to get. And he loves me. My god *loves* me. And he wouldn't say anything because he couldn't tell me until I was sixteen, which is still months away. Hey! Does that mean he knows when my birthday is? Maybe he knows who my parents are too, and what happened to them! That'd be *so* awesome. I've got to ask him. But wait a minute. What about all that stuff tall dark and ugly was gloating about? Not that I'd trust him farther than I could throw Deathscythe, but what he said made sense. Stopping Death just to save me, man that is so... I don't even have the words, but it's got to be seriously illegal. And knowing Fei-chan, he's going to do the "right" thing and turn himself in after he saves me. Was Thanatos right? Will he be forbidden to ever go to Earth again? Will I never see him again? I don't think I could handle that, I really don't. Besides, what about the war? We can't lose a pilot, there are too few of us as it is./_

Duo's inner monologue came to a halt as he reached the room he had been in earlier. He carefully unlocked the door, taking almost three times as long as it had taken earlier because his hands were shaking so much. He walked through, relocked the door and collapsed to the bed. That was it. He was done. The rest was up to his god and friends. His abused body had gone farther than it should have, farther than most people would ever believe it could go, but it could go no farther. Luckily, it didn't have to. Dropping the blocks he'd put up, Duo dropped into unconsciousness. His last thought was that he never had found the bathroom.

The violet-eyed teen never saw the furor his actions caused. He slept deeply as minions ran wild trying to stop the music and answer all of the alarms. He never knew when "Macarena" switched to "Achy Breaky Heart", "Shake your Bon-Bon", the "Chicken Dance". And he slept as a large black dragon dropped from the sky letting off four young figures to join the madness.


	14. Chapter 14

Only one part and an epilogue to go! Enjoy!

Part 14 of 15

Wufei looked at the other three pilots, worry and confusion apparent in his gaze. Nataku had dropped them off just outside the courtyard and it had taken them several minutes to cross the empty expanse in front of the castle door. Yet there had been no attack. No movement was to be seen at all, no guards, no sentries, nothing. If this was indeed where they had brought his priest, why was there no one trying to stop them? Was it a trap? Or was Heero's information wrong?

The only thing to do was to continue on. They were not going to leave without searching every inch of the building or finding Duo. But if he wasn't here? Wufei shook that thought away. He was here. He had to be here. This mission would not be a failure. It would *not*!

Slowly, cautiously, he pulled open the front door only to be almost thrown back from the amount of Chaos inside. Music was blasting through the open doorway. Underneath it was the almost unheard sound of alarm claxons. People were running around like chickens with their heads cut off, strangely apropos since "The Funky Chicken" was playing through the intercoms.

The four pilots looked at each other and grinned, or at least as much as certain of them ever did. "Duo," came from four throats, almost in unison. The insanity going on in this castle was strangely comforting to the boys. To Heero, it explained why there had been no guards. To Trowa, it was a chaos that would make things easier as they traveled through the castle. Quatre was relieved that Duo was in good enough condition to cause this much mischief. Obviously the venom wasn't keeping him down too badly. For Wufei it was a sign of his love's faith in him, this had obviously been done to create confusion for their entrance. Duo hadn't doubted that they would come for him.

Wufei stopped them before they started to go in the doors. "Quatre, can you feel him?"

Quatre took a deep breath. He set all his concentration to one task, remembering Duo. He let all of his memories of the braided American run through his head, building up a picture, piece by piece. When he was sure he had the essence of his friend in mind and heart, he went searching. After several tense minutes he gasped, leaning against Trowa's strength as he shook from tiredness and the overload of emotions he had run into.

"I can't find him," he said softly, fearfully.

Wufei reached over and took his face into his hands. Quatre stilled as power, strength and even more memories and feelings took root in his soul. With steady determination, he searched again. His eyes flew open as he turned, stopped and pointed.

"There," he announced. "He's unconscious and hurting, but he's there."

Heero, Trowa and Wufei memorized the direction he was pointing. All three of them had a good enough sense of direction that they would always head back that way, no matter which way the corridors ran. Besides, if worse came to worse, they could always let Heero blast their way through on a straight line to the other pilot. He had certainly brought enough explosives to do the job.

As they moved through the building, they noticed that Duo's distraction was working all too well. Even when they were seen, no one took the time to notice they were enemies. As "The Freddy" started playing, the pilots headed through a large ballroom that was in the way. Their luck didn't hold.

In the control room a young demon was working, desperately trying to figure out what had been done to the console. He knew that if he didn't fix it, Thanatos would have his hide. Literally. Skinning was a favorite punishment of the God of Painful Death. The worst thing about it was that it would take weeks to regrow, and it would be sensitive for ages.

Looking around for inspiration as to what to do next, the technician's eyes were caught by movement on the monitor. He idly wondered who was in the ballroom, since the party had been completely broken up three or four songs ago. His eyes widened as he saw the guns in the hands of the humans. They weren't dressed as guards, nor were they anyone he recognized. This information raced through his mind as he tried to decide what to do. If he bothered the god and it turned out to be nothing, he would *beg* for just the skinning. However, if they really were intruders, than maybe Thanatos would be pleased with him.

That thought was enough to decide him. He took another look at the four almost out of the ballroom and took off running. Luckily, he knew where his god was supposed to be. He was panting as he pulled up in front of Thanatos.

"Thanatos-sama! There are intruders in the castle!" he barked out as soon as he got his breath back.

"Intruders?" Thanatos growled.

"Hai, sir," he answered curtly. "Four boys with guns. Two had brown hair, one was a blond, and the other had black hair. They were going through the ballroom two minutes ago. I'm not sure where they're headed."

"Shinigami!" Thanatos hissed. "That sanctimonious son of a bastardized god dares to come into my home! He is probably responsible for this mess as well." He turned to a group of guards that had been assembling. "Come with me."

He strode off immediately, leaving the guards and demon tech scrambling to catch up to him.

Quatre stopped suddenly, his hand reaching for his heart. "He knows," he gasped fearfully.

The other pilots didn't need any more information than they received from Quatre's tone of voice to know exactly whom he was talking about. Without hesitating or wasting time on conversation they started running in the direction of their injured pilot. It was too late to worry about stealth; all that mattered was getting to Duo before Thanatos could hurt him anymore.

Heero looked at the wall coming towards them. He pulled a microbomb out and threw a glance at Wufei. "Will this work here?" he asked calmly.

"Only one way to find out," was the only answer Wufei could give as he and the others threw themselves down next to the walls.

Heero threw the small bomb down the corridor and himself to the floor. The explosion was almost drowned out by the music still pulsing in the background and the pilots were through the hole in the wall before the dust had finished settling.

After passing through several rooms and corridors, sometimes through blowing up the walls and sometimes just bashing down the doors, Quatre stopped to reorient. Again he required Wufei's help to filter out the miscellaneous emotions he encountered. Luckily, Duo was much closer this time and he unerringly pointed out a direction. Another of Heero's microbombs and they were on their way.

"Wait!" Quatre screamed out as Heero got ready to demolish another wall.

Heero turned to look at the blond, his eyebrows raised in question.

"He's there," Quatre answered the unspoken question. "But I'm not sure how close he is to the wall. He's still unconscious, so he wouldn't be able to get out of the way."

Wing's pilot nodded his understanding as he reached for another of his supplies, this time pulling out an explosive putty similar to C-4. In the hands of an expert, which Heero most certainly was, it could take out exactly what was required without massive destruction and leaving closeby parts of the structure virtually untouched.

Less than a minute later there was a nice hole in the wall, just large enough for the slender pilots to enter comfortably.

Wufei stepped through first. Every beat of his heart was screaming at him to go to the still figure on the bed, but he ignored it. His instincts were yelling louder, warning of danger coming closer. He headed towards the door even as it was slammed open. He had to trust the other pilots to do as they had planned. However, he knew that there could be no better backup in all the worlds or planes as the three boys at his back now. After all, this was a mission, and they had never failed a mission yet. This certainly was not going to be their first.

As if rehearsed a thousand times, the pilots seamlessly took their places, Trowa heading to the bed and its occupant with Quatre standing guard over the two; Heero placing himself so he could watch Wufei's back while keeping an eye on Quatre and the others. They were ready to do whatever was necessary but knew that it would eventually come down to Wufei. That idea didn't worry them at all.

Trowa blocked out everything around him. He trusted Quatre completely and knew that the blond pilot would handle any threat coming at him. His only job was to get to Duo and get him healed. Nothing else mattered. Wufei would take care of Thanatos, Heero and Quatre would take care of his minions, he would take care of Duo. That's the way the mission had been scripted, there was no need to change it now.

Within seconds he was standing by the bed. If he didn't know that it was impossible, he would believe that the braided pilot was already dead. Pain and exhaustion had pulled all the color from his skin, leaving him a pale ghost of himself, especially against the black sheets. His exhaustion and over exertion had left him in an almost coma like state, and it was hard to tell just by looking that he was still alive. Never had he seen the laughing one so still.

Trowa shook off his fanciful thoughts. With steady hands he pulled out the two vials, carefully he lay the golden one to the side as he uncorked the antidote. He raised his friend off the bed and held him upright while trying to get the vial to the unconscious boys lips. As quickly as possible he poured the antidote, then forced Duo's mouth closed until he swallowed. He reached for the second vial than decided to wait a minute or so and give the antidote time to work. Still holding Duo upright, he looked around to see how the others were doing.

Heero and Quatre were taking down guards with an almost inhuman precision. Every shot they made was a headshot and the guards disappeared as they were killed, not being so considerate as to leave their bodies as obstacles for the other guards. Quatre's thoughts were consumed with making sure his friends were safe, and killing without pain. Pain, especially this close, would only strengthen Thanatos.

Heero was fully attuned to the mission. His job was to take down the guards before they could harm the almost defenseless duo of Trowa and Duo or interfere in the fight with Wufei. To that end he had to take down the enemies as quickly as possible, which meant instant death shots. Distantly the thought crossed his mind that these guards knew nothing of fighting together or handling armed assailants. Obviously the only thing they usually had to worry about was tracking down an escaped prisoner or two, not deal with two highly trained and highly motivated Gundam pilots.

Wufei's attention was almost fully on his opponent. His katana whispered through the air to block the moves of Thanatos' scythe. Briefly he found time to be thankful that having an opponent such as Khushrenada had forced him to keep up on his weapon's fighting. Thanatos had obviously not trained too exhaustively, but he had a large advantage in reach as well as an almost unlimited supply of energy from the pain of the mortals not dying on Earth and its colonies. Shinigami's own reserves were much larger than those of the minor god he was facing, but unfortunately they were not being renewed at nearly the same rate as that of the godling in front of him.

Trowa decided enough time had passed and turned back to his assignment. Still cradling Duo in his arm, he raised the healing potion up. This time there was no need to hold the other teen's mouth closed. From the first taste of it on his tongue, Duo seemed to almost try to suck the potion from the tube. Trowa's visible eye widened as he watched color return to the pale cheeks in front of him. Within seconds of draining the vial Duo's violet eyes drifted open and focused on his face. Scant moments later Duo was sitting up on his own and looking around for his friends' positions.

"How are you feeling?" Trowa broke his silence to ask. Not that he truly had to ask, Duo's glowing countenance seemed to scream good health, but he couldn't quite forget the pale wreck he'd been less than a minute ago.

Duo grinned back at him, putting all fears to rest with that one gesture. "I'm great!" he answered easily. "Feel like a new man! What's been going on since skull head there took me? And how come no one's dancing? This is a great song man!" With that he started bouncing on the bed and moving his hands to the motions of YMCA

Trowa grinned widely. Duo was definitely back.

Duo's eyes widened. "You do know how to smile! Who would have believed it? I need to tell the others right now." He bounced off the bed and started towards the others, automatically taking the gun that Trowa handed him.

He stopped suddenly almost causing the taller pilot to crash into his back. Duo's eyes narrowed as he stared at his boyfriend. "What's wrong with Fei-chan? He's moving awfully slow." He watched the battle closely for another moment moving around to get a better perspective. "There's definitely something wrong, it's like skull head's stronger than him, but that's impossible, he's Shinigami."

"Duo! You're okay!" Quatre called out.

Duo suddenly noticed he had moved next to the blond pilot without realizing it. "Hey Quat! Yeah, I'm fine, but what's up with Wufei, do you know?"

Quatre nodded even as he turned his attention back to the guards he was fighting. "I think it's because no one's dying in the mortal world, so Shinigami-sama isn't getting any power from that, while lots of people are hurting and Thanatos is still getting power from that."

"What about these guys?" Duo asked, taking a couple of shots himself.

"It's either because they're already dead or because they belong to Thanatos, I'm not really sure."

"So *give* their deaths to Shinigami," Duo answered immediately. "*Dedicate* their deaths to him, maybe that'll give him extra power."

"How am I suppose to do that?" Quatre was confused.

"Just call out his name or something every time you shoot. It wouldn't hurt to try would it?"

"Guess not," Quatre shrugged.

"Hey, he said I was his high priest, right? Trust me," Duo smirked. He headed off to tell Heero what they were going to do.

"Is it just me, or are those the two most frightening words in the English language?" Quatre asked Trowa who had stayed with him.

"They are when it's Duo saying them," Trowa answered solemnly, before taking a shot of his own, murmuring "For Shinigami-sama," as the man died.


	15. Chapter 15

Only an epilogue left to go! I hope you've enjoyed!

Part 15 of 15

Duo carefully moved over next to Heero and repeated what he had asked the others to do. Heero nodded his acknowledgment. Duo then moved so he was almost directly behind where Wufei was fighting almost desperately. Not entirely sure what he was doing, just knowing it felt right, Duo dropped to his knees and began to pray to his god. He poured into the prayer all of his power, the memories of all the lives he had taken and every bit of the love he held in his heart for the dark god who he had worshiped since he was young and the young man he fell in love with in his teens.

Shinigami was fighting all out, as a mortal. He couldn't risk using his full powers until Duo and the others were safely back on Earth. If he gave away his location now, some god or goddess looking to get in good with the hierarchy would grab him in a heartbeat, leaving his friends with no way to get home. There was no way he could allow that to happen, but if he didn't do something soon, Thanatos would win. It was at this point that he felt extra power coming into him, little bursts at first, filling his reserves. Then he felt it.

Power, raw power. The kind of power that comes only once in a god's lifetime, if he's lucky enough to ever get it. The power that comes only from a worshiper totally devoted to you. A pure power that raises you up, fills you up, makes you greater than you were before. Better than nectar or ambrosia could ever be.

Shinigami moved faster, his strikes harder; all that was in his mind was getting this over with so he could spend some time with the one who was praying to him. No longer focused on anything at all but the power within and the scythe in front of him.

There! An opening!

The katana hit the scythe's handle with everything he had, everything his priest could give him.

CRACK!

Thanatos stopped where he was in utter disbelief, unable to move a muscle. The head of his scythe was on the floor along with almost a foot of handle and the blade of a katana glinted at his neck.

"Yield," Shinigami's voice was low, deep, hard. "Or die."

Thanatos dropped the handle and raised his hands. His eyes burned with hate. "I yield, but what does it gain you Shinigami? What I did is but a pinprick compared to the Iron Maiden you closed. Do you truly think you will ever be able to take that which you've saved? Kami-sama will be searching for you for the rest of your immortal life, and so will all the Houses. Was it worth it? He's just a mortal."

"Duo will never be just a mortal," Wufei's eyes were raging infernos compared to the campfires in Thanatos' eyes. "Your actions precipitated all of this, and the pain and suffering they caused are on your conscience as much as they will stay on mine. But since you have no conscience, that would not be much of a punishment, would it? Hear my Judgement, Thanatos."

"You have no right!" the God of Painful Death yelled.

"I have every right," Shinigami's voice was hard and cold but soft, it's very softness more threatening than any amount of ranting and raving could be. "I am the Head of our House and you disobeyed my orders. You took my high priest without my permission, kidnapped and tried to kill my sworn Consort. Under our rules, that is the same as if you had tried to murder me."

"Consort? But he's not marked!" Thanatos' bone white skin turned a sickly yellow color.

"You know I could not mark him until he was sixteen, but I swore him as my Consort a while ago. If you had paid attention to anything beyond your own wants, you would have known that."

"Excuse me," Duo interrupted. "What do you mean you 'swore me as your Consort a while ago'? I didn't know anything about that! Didn't you need my permission or something?"

"Um..." Wufei looked abashed. "I was going to talk to you about it. You would have had the right to dissolve it once you knew all the facts. It wouldn't have been totally binding until you agreed as well. I thought it would give you some added protection from whomever was stalking you."

"Hmmm..." Duo mock glared for a minute. "Well, I guess I can forgive you. So, whatcha' gonna do about him?"

Wufei grinned evilly. "I have some ideas. First however, I need to get all of you back to Earth, than I'll come back to deal with him. Until then... I think *this* will keep him out of trouble." Shinigami pointed at Thanatos. Suddenly, instead of the God of Painful Death dressed in a forbidding black robe, carrying a scythe and looking all menacing, there was the God of Painful Death dressed in Mexican clothes dancing to "La Cucharacha".

All the pilots laughed. "How long will he have to dance?" Quatre asked, giggling.

"Until the music stops," Wufei replied as he led the way out of the room. "Duo, I do hope you put it on permanent loop."

"What do you take me for, Fei-chan? Of *course* I put it on permanent loop. Geesh."

Ten minutes later they were finally outside and on Nataku, ready to go home. Duo cuddled closer to the boy sitting behind him and smiled softly as he felt Wufei hold him tighter. "Fei-chan?"

"Yes, love?" Wufei nuzzled his nose deeper into the braid in front of him, breathing in the scent he loved.

"What's going to happen?"

Wufei put his chin over Duo's shoulder and held him even tighter, as if trying to make them one body. "I'm really not sure, Duo," he sighed. "A lot of people suffered because of what I did. That can't just be forgotten. It's up to Kami-sama in the end. It always is."

"You could hide, we could be together," Duo's voice was choked as if he was holding back tears.

"No I can't, love, you know I can't," Wufei was glad Duo couldn't see his face, and quickly wiped his eyes on his love's hair.

"I know," Duo ducked his head. "It wouldn't be honorable."

"I have to face Justice too, you know."

"You'll come back though, right?" Duo's shimmering violet eyes refused to look anywhere except at the dragon's head in front of him, refusing to accept that they were back on Earth, and almost back to the safe house. "Promise you'll come back."

"If I can. I'll try, that's all I can promise. I'll always try to get back to you. I love you Duo Maxwell." Wufei felt Nataku land and the others getting off behind him.

"Wufei?" Quatre called.

Wufei turned to look at the blonde, while still keeping his arms around the braided boy in front of him. Understanding what he wanted, he turned and took hold of Duo's hand as he slid down the dragon's side, bringing his love down with him.

Quatre ran up to them as soon as they were down. He threw his arms around Wufei in a hug. "I know you've got to go back, Shinigami-sama, but don't forget you always have a home here with us, okay Wufei?"

Wufei carefully hugged the Arabian back. "I'll remember, Quatre. Take care of Duo while I'm not here, please? Make sure he doesn't do anything stupid."

Trowa placed his hand on Wufei's shoulder. "I don't think that's possible, but we'll try. Take care of yourself and come back if you can."

Wufei placed his hand over the one on his shoulder, the only acknowledgment needed. He turned to the final member. "Heero." It was all that was said, perhaps, between the two of them, it was all that was necessary.

"Wufei," was the only response. With that, the three pilots headed into the house, leaving the final two alone.

Wufei turned Duo around so he could see his face. "I want you to make me a promise, Duo."

"Anything," was Duo's immediate answer.

"Don't do anything stupid, please. I will try my best to come back to you, but don't you dare try to come to me, got it? No suicide missions, no self-destructs, none of it. Agreed?" Wufei was deathly serious. "That's giving up, and that's something Duo Maxwell doesn't do, right?"

Duo sighed. He really didn't want to promise. Not that he had any intentions of killing himself, not really, but the idea of living the rest of his mortal life without Wufei was not something he wanted to contemplate. At least if he died he'd be with his love.

Wufei could tell what he was thinking just from the expression on his face and knew he had to nip it in the bud. "If you die, you won't come to me, you know that, right? I'm not allowed to Judge someone I'm personally involved with. That is, if I'm still even a god at the time. I certainly won't be head of my House anymore, which means I won't be able to get your soul, I probably won't even know you're dead."

Duo's eyes flew wide in shock. A lifetime without Wufei would be torture enough, but an afterlife without him too? A tear slipped unnoticed down his cheek. "I promise," he whispered finally.

Wufei lifted his hand and caught the tear on his finger. The crystal drop shimmered on his bronze skin catching the light and throwing off rainbows in all directions. "May I keep this?" he asked quietly. As Duo nodded his head, a small glass sphere formed around the tear and attached to a cord. Without prompting, Duo took the necklace holding his tear, and placed it around Wufei's neck. "Thank you," Wufei murmured.

Duo leaned up and caught the words with his lips. For minutes the two strained together, arms around each other as they tried to pour into the kiss everything that they were never able to put into words. Finally they were forced to part for breath.

Duo pressed little kisses all over Wufei's face as his hands ranged up and down the tight body he was holding. "Can we?" he gasped. "Please?"

Wufei's hands and mouth were just as frantic and there was nothing in the multiverse he wanted more, but he knew it wasn't possible. Reluctantly he pulled away. "I love you, Duo. More than anyone I have ever cared for in millennia of life."

"I love you too, Wufei, Shinigami. More than I ever dreamed possible. I want to show you that! Please?"

Wufei shook his head. "I want it, I want *you* so badly. But if we do, I don't think Kami-sama would ever let me see you again. Not if I broke that rule. I can't take that chance."

Duo nodded and stepped back. "Then go, now. Maybe the sooner you go, the sooner you'll come back. I won't give up on you Wufei. I'll always love you, no matter what! I'll pray to you every day, I promise."

Wufei stepped forward and hugged Duo with all his might, pressing frantic kisses to his hair and face, everywhere he could reach. "I'll be listening. I love you, Duo, I love you, I love you, I love you."

Duo tried to grin. "I love you more. Go, please, before I'm not able to let you go."

Wufei pressed one last long kiss to his love's mouth before running to Nataku. He sprang onto the dragon's back and they took off immediately. He looked back to see Duo still waving good-bye and waved back.

Duo continued waving until the black dragon disappeared from sight. He then collapsed to the ground in tears, deep sobs racking his body. Not even the poison he was just healed from hurt as badly as losing the boy he loved. He stayed there on the ground until the other three came out and gathered him up to take inside.


	16. Chapter 16

Finished! Yay! I hope you enjoyed!

Epilogue

Quatre walked slowly into his bedroom and curled up in Trowa's arms. "I don't know what to do anymore Trowa. I honestly don't think he's going to make it much longer."

It had been three months since Wufei had had to leave. The loss of one Gundam pilot turned out not to be a problem. The Day Without Death as it was being called had scared the populace of Earth and the colonies so badly that an immediate cease-fire was called. Within a week there was a treaty that was as close to being equitable as it was possible to be. The Gundams had been hidden and not used since that day.

For the first month, Duo had been his normal self. Once he awoke from his crying fit, he had started bouncing around with his normal flair. After a month and a half, he started getting quieter. Quatre had promised that Wufei would always have a home with him, and expanded that to all of the pilots. Every house he owned had five bedrooms; one set up for each of the pilots and Duo had stayed with him the whole time.

It was about two months after the end of the war that the pilots realized there was something seriously wrong with the violet-eyed teen. He stopped eating regularly and sometimes he'd come downstairs with his braid half undone. They'd tried to get him to talk, but he'd become almost totally silent.

"I don't understand, Trowa. I know he loved Wufei, but they were only together for a week or so before he had to leave. He should not be this... this... devastated." Quatre sounded confused and frustrated. "And he won't *talk* to me!"

"Could he be trying to go to Wufei without breaking his word? I mean, he's not actually *trying* to kill himself," was Trowa's suggestion.

"He's giving up. That's not like him. And I have had *enough*. Come on." With a very determined look on his face, Quatre shot to his feet.

Trowa shrugged and followed as his lover strode purposefully out the door. He expected him to go to Wufei's room, which is where the braided boy was usually found these days, and was surprised when Quatre headed for Heero's instead.

BAM! BAM! BAM! Heero pulled open the door with annoyance clearly written on his face. "Mission," was all Quatre said, and headed back towards Duo's room, fully confidant that he would be followed.

BAM! BAM! BAM! "Open the door Duo!" Quatre shouted. He rattled the knob but it was locked and there was no sound from inside the room. He turned to his companions. "Open it."

Heero and Trowa looked at each other for a moment before deciding that now was probably not the time to remind the blond dictator that he had keys to all the doors in his house. With a shrug at each other they kicked open the door.

Quatre swept into the room as if he owned it, which he did. He strode confidently over to the bed and glared down at its occupant. Duo blinked up at him in a mixture of confusion and anger. The Arabian sat down on the bed next to him and just stared. And stared. And stared.

"What do you want?" Duo finally exploded. He tore his gaze away from the exasperating blond in front of him, only to have it caught in the stoic stare of Heero Yuy. On the other side of him a green eye in a banged face watched just as intently. "What the hell is your problem?"

Quatre got right up in his face and yelled back. "What the hell is *your* problem?"

"You know what my problem is!" Duo screamed at him.

"No, actually I don't. OK, Wufei's gone, and I know you miss him, but you only knew him for a year! He was only your boyfriend for a week! And there's no telling when, or if, he's going to come back! But that is no damn reason for you to try killing yourself by neglect yourself like this!"

"You know nothing," Duo spit out. He surged up into a sitting position and pushed Quatre off onto the floor. Or he would have, if Trowa hadn't gotten there first to catch him.

Heero moved just as fast, grabbing Duo by the braid and forcing him to look at him. "Then tell us," he bit out.

"Don't touch my hair, Yuy," Duo growled, grabbing his braid back. "You really want to know? Fine, whatever. Sit down."

He waited until everyone was sitting down before starting. "Quat man, how did you feel when you found out Fei-chan was Shinigami-sama?"

Quatre looked at the others in confusion, not understanding what the question had to do with anything. However, Duo was talking so he wasn't going to ignore the question. "Shocked, of course, especially since I could feel the power he was using. I had a major fit after he left though."

"That's the truth," Trowa murmured.

"What about you, Trowa? Heero? How did you feel?" Duo's voice was intent.

"Disbelief, denial," was Heero's contribution. "I don't know that I truly believed what he said until we went to Thanatos' dimension after you... riding a dragon."

"Pretty much the same, shock, disbelief, some betrayal that he hadn't told us before." Trowa answered.

"How did I react?" was Duo's next question.

Again the shared glance. "You... you didn't really," Quatre slowly answered. "You just made some quip. It was like it was... no big deal or something. I thought it was just because you were hurting so bad."

"I've had a lot of time to think over the past couple of months, and you're right, there was no shock, no surprise, nothing. I already knew." The others' eyes all flew wide. "Not consciously of course, I never looked at Wufei and wondered if he was the God of Death, or anything like that, but still... I knew.

"You've got to understand, I've prayed to Shinigami since Solo first told me about him when I was six years old. And he has always listened. I could feel that, this little tingle just on the edge of my awareness whenever I prayed or called out his name. I never blamed him when the people around me died, people died when they're fated to die, he just collects them. I blamed the fates, and I blamed me, because obviously the people I cared about were fated to die because I cared about them... but I never blamed Shinigami-sama. Over the years, he's been my constant, I'd pray to him every week or so, just to let him know how I was doing, ask him to look after Solo, Father Maxwell and Sister Helen, whatever. Always, always I'd feel that little tingle to tell me he was listening."

Duo twisted between the bodies on the bed until his feet reached the floor and he had room to pace. He continued. "He was always there, and the best thing was, he wasn't going to leave me. Unlike the other people I cared about, he wasn't going to die and leave me alone. After all, Shinigami was Death, and *Death* *can't* *die*! Sometimes knowing that is the only thing that has kept me going, from living on the streets to being a Gundam pilot. I knew that he was there, that he was listening and that he wouldn't leave. It didn't matter that he didn't *do* anything, all I needed was someone I could trust to always be there. I wanted to meet him enough that I was never scared of dying, but I knew he would still be there when I did die, so I didn't go rushing into it either.

"Then I came to Earth. I met Heero, met Quatre, thought 'cool there are other pilots and they're weird, but not so bad'. Then I met Wufei. From the very beginning there was a kind of connection with him, though I didn't know what it was. I wanted to be around him, even though his rants sometimes drove me insane. I thought it was just because he was so incredibly cute, and yes, I did think that from the first time I saw him, but there was something else there. Looking back, I've noticed something interesting. From the first time I spent any length of time with Wufei, I stopped praying to Shinigami... unless, I was separated from Fei-chan for more than a week. Interesting don't you think, considering I hadn't missed a week since I was six.

"Here's something else. I told you that I had felt someone watching me for months, right?" The others nodded agreement, still in too much shock to truly talk. "Well that must have been when Thanatos started watching me, because Shinigami had been watching me the whole time. I just didn't think anything of it, until I started noticing something was different with the feeling I got. That was when I really started paying attention to everyone that was watching me, not just the unusual feeling one."

Quatre finally got his wits together. This monologue had been nothing like what he had been expecting, and it explained a lot about his friend, but it still didn't answer the question. "But if you've gone without seeing him for nine years before even meeting him, why are you acting like this after only three months?"

Duo settled down on the bed. Not that he didn't want to still pace, but his body was protesting a lack of nutrients and exercise and had shut down his legs for the time being. "Because he's not listening." Sadness, loneliness and worry could all be heard in Duo's voice as he answered. "I've been praying to him everyday like I promised, but he's not listened to a single one since he left. I thought I could handle it. I was *sure* that he would come to me for my sixteenth birthday, after all it was the day we'd actually be able to be together without breaking Kami-sama's law, but he didn't come."

"I thought you didn't know when your birthday is," Trowa spoke up quietly.

"I don't, exactly," Duo answered, "but Wufei said it was more than a month away when he was explaining why we couldn't, remember? You know Wufei, if it had been more than a month and a half away, he would have said that, but he didn't, he said more than a month, that means between a month and a day, and a month and a half."

"Can't argue with that," Heero agreed.

"See? He's left me," Duo said sadly.

"Not by his choice," Quatre reminded him.

"So? Solo didn't leave me by his choice, Father Maxwell and Sister Helen didn't leave me by their choice. It doesn't change the fact that he's left me alone. All alone," his voice trailed off despairingly.

SLAP! Duo's hand flew to his cheek as he stared at Quatre in complete and utter shock.

"Did you feel that?" Quatre almost growled.

"Well, duh, Quatre! You slapped me! Of course I felt that!"

"Then you're not alone are you? I have to be here, right here in front of you in order to have slapped you so hard you felt it, right? Trowa and Heero are here too, you want them to prove it to you?"

"Um... no, that's okay," Duo gulped, looking at the other two, stronger pilots.

"You are not alone. You will never be alone, because you've got friends that care about you. Wufei's on a long mission with no radio contact. When he finishes it, he'll come home. We don't know how long the mission is going to be, and you'll stay with us until the mission is over, but you're not going to give up on him, because Wufei Chang, Shinigami, does not fail! Isn't that right?"

"Right, sir, Quatre, sir!" Duo threw a salute.

"Now," Quatre continued, grabbing Duo's hand. "You are going to come downstairs and get something to eat, then come back up here and get some sleep. I expect to see you downstairs for breakfast tomorrow having slept, showered and done your hair, and you'd better bet you're going to be eating breakfast too. If Wufei were here there's no way he'd put up with this pouting from you and I'm not going to either..." Quatre's voice faded as he dragged Duo out the door and down the hall.

Trowa and Heero were left alone in the bedroom. "Why exactly were we part of this?" Heero asked in confusion.

Trowa shrugged. "Moral support?" he suggested.

Heero shook his head. "I'm going back to bed."

The next couple of months showed a marked improvement in the physical, mental and emotional health of the violet-eyed teen. Now that the war was over, the four pilots were trying hard to act like normal teens, including going to school. Duo was very popular with both guys and girls and could usually be found surrounded by a group of friends whereever he was. Only Heero, Trowa and Quatre realized he wasn't quite as boisterous as he used to be, and sometimes he would have times when he didn't want to talk to anyone, especially after praying to Shinigami and once again not getting a response. However, this time the others knew better than to let him brood about it, and would only let it go on so long before someone came to drag him out of his room.

Until one day...

"Master Quatre, Master Duo, you have a visitor." For Duo, the butler's presence faded into the background as his eyes caught on the one face he'd almost convinced himself he'd never see again.

"FEI-CHAN!" Duo's scream was heard throughout the house, and Heero and Trowa came rushing in to see the violet-eyed boy locked deep into a kiss with a Chinese teen.

Heero, Trowa and Quatre gave the two boys a minute alone before descending en masse.

Wufei smiled brighter than any of them had ever seen him smile before even though he didn't remove his hands from the boy trying to crush him into himself. "I'm sorry it took so long, but I had to personally clear up the entire mess I had made before I was even punished."

"What was your punishment?" Quatre asked worriedly.

Wufei smiled even wider. "After reviewing everything, Kami-sama agreed with you. He said the worse punishment he could think of would be a lifetime of living with Duo. So he temporarily took away my godhood and stuck me down here on Earth for the duration of Duo's natural life. After that, our status will be reviewed."

"Enough questions, he can talk later, right now we have some making up for lost time to do," Duo ordered. He grabbed his love's hand and started pulling him upstairs towards his bedroom. Wufei just laughed and waved as he was pulled to exactly where he wanted to be.

The End


End file.
